Rough All Over
by PenguinsForever
Summary: Piper knows she shouldn't be spending so much time with a Soc. She knows that they both have completely different lives, and they both shouldn't get involved in either of them. But what happens when a problem comes and they both have to work together to solve it? All the while trying to keep their feelings distant from each other, they could find a way. JASPER AU.
1. Prologue

**A/N: Okay, I got the idea of this story when I reread _The Outsiders _by S.E. Hinton. For those of you who haven't read it yet, you really should; it's like a classic. This could be like a crossover, but I only got the idea of it from them; the characters that are not OCs all belong to Rick Riordan, and Rick Riordan only. But some ideas in here are from S.E. Hinton. Like the title was inspired from the book. So yeah, enjoy! And yes, this will be a Jasper story.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Percy Jackson characters at all or any ideas from the novel, ****_The Outsiders_****, ****at all.**

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_Shake, shake, shake, _I groaned as I felt something lightly grasping my shoulder. It was 6 am for crying out loud! Couldn't whoever was trying to wake me up _can it_, and go back to sleep? Really, it was all I actually wanted to do on a Monday morning like this. So why was the person who was shaking me being so stubborn?

"Piper...wake up..." a deep male voice called out, still messing with my shoulder. I grunted and reached over to the other side of the bed for my hands to grasp the pillow, and I hit the person who was calling my name as hard as my sleepy mind could muster. The person groaned a little, but other than that, didn't react at all.

"Piper, please...it's the first day of school..." I could notice his voice was equally tired as I felt, but that didn't make me feel any more sympathy than which I already felt for hitting the guy. Which was absolutely none.

I finally forced my mouth open to talk, knowing that if I kept silent for any longer, I just might explode and possibly kill the person who was interrupting my sleep. The previous night, I had been working my ass off at the local diner nearby my apartment that I share with my dad, and I didn't get home until like two in the morning. And really, I would do anything for just a couple of more minutes of shut-eye. "I don't understand why you care so much...you look forward to _skipping _classes, not actually _attending _them."

I already knew who was waking me up the moment he shook my shoulder because it was simply obvious. In the back of my room, there's a window, and I gave him and my other best friend Leo the key to it so they could visit me if they needed to. They had a hard time with their families, so I offered them free hospitality since they were practically family to me whenever they wanted.

It was mornings like these that I sort of wished I never gave them the key. "Well, yeah but it's the _first day_. I can't afford to go to detention like this. Do you remember the_ last_ reaction of my mother when I was put into detention so early?"

If I wasn't still attempting to sleep and my eyes weren't glued shut, I would have rolled my eyes, though the reaction was a tad bit humorous. No, scratch that, it was _hilarious_. His mother literally flipped out on him. I could remember the entire conversation fresh from my memory as if it was yesterday, even though it was a year ago. I would tell it to you, but she had said some words that weren't even in _my _vocabulary. "You know, ever since you started dating Annabeth last month, you have been acting a little more responsible and maybe even more organized. I'm not sure if I like it or not."

Annabeth was Percy's, the irritable stupid boy that was shaking my shoulder earlier and my best friend, girlfriend. They had been friends for a long time now, but Percy finally had the pair to ask her out, despite all of our teasing at him. Leo and I were close with Annabeth as well, but not as close as Percy, Leo, and I were together. We had been best friends for who knows how long when, and that was why Percy was at my room so early in the morning instead of at Annabeth's place.

That, and the fact that I was probably the most lethargic human being alive, and Annabeth didn't need help waking up to go to school; she was always so prepared on her own. I might have even mistaken her for a Soc because she was so organized and responsible (the complete opposite of Percy), if I haven't known her and her family for so long. But once you do get to know her, there's no mistaking it. She was a legitimate Greaser, and that was _it_.

"Well, get used to it. I'm not leaving that girl anytime soon." I could feel a small smile creep onto my face, even though I was still mad at Percy, and didn't do anything to stop it. They really were a cute couple.

"Good. She's good for you."

"You really need to wake up. I promise if you do, I won't bother you _that _much in the mornings on school days."

"Nope."

"Fine, then, you really leave me no choice, McLean." He went quiet for a while and that quickly got me thinking. Percy was _never _quiet. I could hear some shuffling of footsteps and the window to my room creaking open again. Was he leaving to go back to his own apartment that was literally right above mine? After a few moments of more silence, I finally sighed in relief. I folded my arms under the back of my head and kicked my left foot over the right, getting ready to chill for a while.

Biggest. Mistake. Ever. Because right when I was about to drift off again, I felt something so icy cold, that it literally sent chills _straight _through my bones, making me shiver dramatically. Water. Fuck you, Percy. I felt my body shoot up to give a sharp glare at the smirking raven-haired kid, ignoring the dripping madness of the water that was weighing down my pajamas. "What the _hell_, Jackson?" I shouted even though I was used to this. I got so lazy sometimes, that he almost did this routine everyday.

Through his chuckles, "Oh, man...you should have seen your face...oh God, it _never_ gets old..." I swung my body over the bed to give him a nice slap on the arm to make him shut up.

Of course, it was no use, but I still resumed to shove Percy out the window again. "That's it, I'm taking back my key."

"No you won't. You always say that and you never do. As much as you don't like to admit it, I know you like my company as much as you like Leo's. You would be too lonely without us," then his big smirking face shifted to a deep frown, "we all probably would be."

And it's true. All three of us never really got much attention from our families. We always did have family issues. Percy's was that his mom was forced to look after him when his father abandoned them. The two were close to each other, but there was always some type of gap. I couldn't really explain it, but I just know it was there.

Leo's mom had died when he was little, and his dad was forced to look after him. And they were nowhere near close. There was always some type of fighting going on between them, and Leo's dad never understood anything about his own son. And either way, he was always too preoccupied with his work to pay much attention to him.

That's something _I _can understand. My mom had abandoned me as soon as I was born, also forcing my dad to look after me. Unlike Leo, me and my dad were close to each other like Percy and his mother were, but it was different. Percy's mother actually took care of him. She fed him, offered to help him with anything he needed, and mostly...gave him _attention_. I barely even got to _see _my dad nowadays, due to his work.

I shook my head away from the sorrow thoughts and turned back to Percy. "Okay, you're right. But you should still go back to your apartment now. Your mother is probably worried. And I need to change anyways, thanks to _you_," I said, gesturing to my wet clothes.

"Oh, please. If it weren't for me, you would be entering school with your pajamas!" He exclaimed while climbing out the window.

I blew an immature raspberry at him, refusing to admit that what he said was absolutely one hundred percent true, and smirked when he blew one back, even though he was out of my sight now. I looked back at my book-bag that was sitting next to my bed and sighed. It was time to get ready.

After I was done getting ready and I ate breakfast and such, I marched outside of my apartment, waiting for Leo and Percy to come so we could walk together to go to school. Our school was literally a block away, and it wouldn't take that long to walk to school. It was a peaceful morning outside; the birds were chirping in the near distance, the sun was shining bright above my head, and even though I was complaining just half an hour ago, I couldn't have been more optimistic about the day. Something just felt so..._right_.

And like it normally does, that moment only lasted about five seconds when a blue Mustang came into view right across the street and parked right in front of a cafe. A blonde teenage boy that looked around my age and a black-haired girl that looked sort of Hispanic walked out of the car. I groaned again as I immediately recognized who they were.

They were both Socs, of course; you could already tell that by the type of expensive car they drove in. And they were practically the most popular kids in the school. The girl as I mentioned before, was Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arellano, and she was one of the most educated, most know-it-all, most responsible person I have ever seen in my entire life. She reminded me of Annabeth, but a hundred times more worse.

The "handsome and good-looking guy" as the Soc cheerleaders that were near my locker called him, otherwise known as the mentioned blonde guy in front of my eyes, was Jason Grace, the practical _definition _of a Soc. Expensive clothes, expensive house, expensive car, and expensive family pretty much sealed the deal. Not to mention his looks. Sure he's okay-looking with his sharp blond locks and his bright blue eyes, and he's fairly tall too, but that didn't cut it in my opinion.

And it was going to take a lot more than good looks and a lot of money to change it.

Anyways, rumor has it that they're dating. I'm not sure if it is true or not, but the way that he acts all gentleman-y in front of her, sort of reinforces my thoughts about them being together. I scoffed; two separate snobs are enough, no need to bring them _together _like that. And besides, Socs didn't get what it was like with Greasers. They didn't understand what we had to go through everyday. Some of us couldn't even walk to a nearby shop without consulting their parents first and get away with it without a good beating.

And that's what I hate about them most. Of course, we don't really talk to them much, but our glares that we shoot at each other are more than words itself. Socs and Greasers are complete arch enemies with each other, and nothing in the world could change that.

I frown even more as I remember that the two laughing Socs in front of my eyes are still in the same high school as us, attending Sophomore year. That made me sigh as I felt the tiredness that I had before, slowly creeping its way back into my body, urging to conquer it.

It was going to be a long day.

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**A/N: Was this alright? Please tell me in a review because I've been thinking about this for like four weeks straight, and I finally had the courage to write this after a good long consideration.**

**Till next time,**

**Penguin**


	2. Pointless Fights

**A/N: A _lot _of explaining in this chapter, so be prepared for that. As this is still the beginning of this story, this is to be expected, although the main plot will definitely be hinted at. You'll see what I mean once you start reading. But since Jason and Piper are basically untold enemies, don't really expect any major Jasper until later on. Anyways, continue reading!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Percy Jackson characters at all or any ideas from the novel, ****_The Outsiders_****, at all.**

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The rest of the first school week was basically a bore, and I'm not going to put you through all of the stuff that happened. It was the same thing as always, really; we'd pick on the Socs about being so stuck up and aloof, and they'd pick on us about being slightly dirtier than them and...well, not so aloof. We get angry and we express our emotions way too often than Socs do, so you can't exactly _not _expect us to fight about every little thing.

Roughhousing is major from where we live. It's everywhere you look. We don't just glare at each other for the fun of it; we fight with our hands, too. It's not something we're exactly proud of, but we most definitely consider it if necessary.

But over the past years or so, we learned to control ourselves when it comes to it. Now it's mostly just glares. The two sides of the situation are complete opposites.

You probably have no idea what I mean when I speak of Greasers and Socs, do you? I suppose not now, because it's not used very often these days. We live in a small city in Oklahoma, and if we so much as speak of the terms 'Greasers' and 'Socs' outside of our city, we are immediately greeted with confusion. I'm supposing that's what you might be thinking now.

Well, Socs is just a short for Social. It's pronounced the same way as 'social', but just without the '-ial' part at the end. Socs are more from the upper class of this town, and they're incredible rich. They always wear the cleanest of clothes and drive in expensive cars and everything about them is neat-and-tidy. Your typical snob. Like I said before, their character is aloof, like they don't care about anything but themselves. Like they don't_ feel_ anything.

Greasers are like the exact opposite. We barely have enough money to pay for college, and we wear less hygienic clothes. In other cities I guess, other than where we live, we'd probably be described as a 'punk' or your stereotypical biker. We put way too much grease in our long, overgrown hair, and that's how our term 'Greaser' stuck. We would never _ever _be described as aloof. Just like I had said earlier on, our emotions are almost impossible to be bottled up for too long. Anger, sadness, jealousy...you name it.

But that's the only thing I'll ever give the Socs credit for; their temper. You're probably wondering why I'm bringing this up now and not before on the first day of school. About why I delayed this. Well, I'm about to show you how the Socs character and the Greasers character may react when interacted with each other.

"I told you guys not to go messing in our territory all over again, didn't I?" Remember the guy who had spilled water and had woken me up that very first day of school? As lighthearted as he may have seemed back then, he only reacted that way around people he actually liked. Percy Jackson was always a good friend, but equally as good as being an enemy.

"And I told _you_ to stop blaming us for that. I know what goes on between us Socs, and no way would we do something as immature as that," the blond-haired Soc that I had described that was near the cafe with the Hispanic girl retorted, gesturing to the huge mess that was a large plain near where we lived.

Jason Grace and Percy Jackson were enemies from the start. I don't remember how they came to be like that, but every time I brought the subject up, Percy would stiffen up, something that was so unlike him, and refuse to talk more of it. I never really had bothered since. But they were always at each other's throats, and blame each other for every bad thing that happened in their lives.

The Socs and Greasers never had a 'leader', but they did most certainly look up to people from their own side. And those two were the top ones to look up to. They always sort of had side people, ones that were always by their backs whenever they needed them, and Reyna was always Jason's. They trusted each other for everything and I don't think they ever really could be separated as friends.

Leo and I were always Percy's and we forever would be. Nothing could ever come in between us. Not some pesky, snobbish, only-thinking-about-themselves teenagers such as Jason and Reyna.

There were gangs too, within the Socs and the Greasers. Our gang included: Percy, Leo, Annabeth, Grover (one of Percy's close friends), Rachel (me and Annabeth's friend), and me. There were plenty of other gangs among the Greasers, but put together, we made one hell of a team. Same thing with the Socs. Jason and Reyna's gang included: them two, Dakota (some guy with some major alcoholic issues), Bobby (Jason's friend), Gwen (Reyna's friend), and some other two kids named Hazel and Frank. I don't know much about them, since they're sort of new around here, but it doesn't matter; any friend or ally with a Soc is an enemy to us.

The reason why we were fighting in _this _case, was because someone had ruined our crop field _again _after like the fifth time trying to regrow everything. It had started about three weeks ago, and we were really starting to get upset.

The first time, we just thought a bunch of foxes that lived where we did had attacked it and ruined the plain, so we just decided to ignore it and just clean the mess up ourselves. The second time, the damage was a lot worse to be done by a couple of foxes, but still cleaned up. The third time, not a single living thing was in sight, so we started to suspect. The fourth time and the fifth, we just started blaming the Socs for our problems just like we always do.

"Shut up, Grace. I know you're trying to get us back for the prank we had pulled on you and your comrades last year. But this is going too far. You're-" Percy started to say, but was cut off by Jason.

"No. I'm not going to hear this. You believe what you want, but we didn't do it," he said with slight impatience. I rolled my eyes; if they didn't do it then who did? It was typical of Socs not to take fault for their own actions, so why should they possibly start now?

Percy snorted and replied, "yes, it was only possible it could have been you guys! Who else possibly could have owned machines big enough to cause this much damage? It's just like you to spend your money on stupid things like these." And that was true. Since Socs had so much money, there was no telling of what they could do with it. But now thinking on it, if Greasers had that much money, there's no telling of _we _could do with it.

Money was a serious thing, especially coming from a Greaser myself, and if someone had chosen to waste, I would pity the day they were born. There were other things people needed to be focusing on. Like trying to figure out who ruined one of the best crop plains in the town. And it had to be the Socs...right?

But the longer we stood there, the longer I started to doubt myself. This 'prank' that they were playing...this is too extreme, even for Socs. So who possibly could have done it, if not them? I broke out of my thoughts as soon as I realized that Jason and Percy were on the limit...again. They were just a centimeter away from completely losing it, and that's when I knew that I had to do something about it.

So I started to calm Percy down a little bit, and surprisingly, Reyna was doing it to Jason too. There was only us four at the plain at the moment, but I was expecting that. We don't really like to draw crowds much. Only if it was necessary. At first the calming didn't really work, so then I had to lean in to mutter into his ear. "Percy, he really isn't worth it. For all we know, he may be telling the truth."

Percy turned to glare at me, something that almost never happened, so it kind of surprised me, but over the past years, I've learned to make a straight face these days. "You really believe him?"

"Well...no. But I don't _not _believe him. Does that make sense?" He was still glaring at me, so I added, "Come on, break time's over. We need to head back to class. Annabeth's waiting for you, remember?" I knew that last part would do the trick. He always seemed to soften a little when it came to Annabeth these days.

I heard a snort, and my face instinctively turned to Jason Grace's, and he was watching us, clearly annoyed at what I was pointing out. "Whatever, Jackson. Run back to your girlfriend. Hopefully she'll kick some sense into you, before you start blaming things on others without any proof."

Thankfully, Percy didn't respond physically to that, but I could see it in his eyes that he wanted to pound Grace to the ground. I tugged on his sleeve a little, motioning him to move forward, and he did, but not before muttering quietly, "douche-bag."

Apparently Jason heard, and soon his reply came with just as much hate, "faggot," but that was soon also followed by a somewhat scolding slap on an arm, which I had a hinting suspicion Reyna had caused.

As we finally entered the school again, Percy turned to me once again and said quietly, "I'm sorry, Piper. I didn't mean to act harshly to you. I guess I was just a little pissed. I acted a lot like Jason back there, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you sort of did," I said, nodding a little, "but it's understandable. I'm just glad we didn't create a bigger scene than we had to."

Percy nodded his head once, but other than that, he didn't say another word about it.

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The next day after the incident, it was lunch time and we were sitting with the rest of the gang in the table that we usually sit at. Even in a cafeteria lunch room, you could easily see the different sides in which students sat at. It was like some type of segregation, but it was different. We both treated our sides separately but equally. Not one side was greater than the other. Well, at least no one spoke it out loud.

Anyways, in every table sat a different gang. There was the Travis and Conner gang sitting in the far right corner at a table. Those kids were actually pretty cool, but they were never to be trusted. I heard they had a really tough time back from where they came from, and they stole from others either for the fun of it, or because they were way too depressed. They didn't act like it, though. They would look like any random rebellious teenager if you didn't know them as well as our gang knew them.

Another gang that we were familiar with was Drew's gang, and that was something I never would want to be a part of. I had actually sat with them one time because I was friends with a girl named Lacy from that gang, but I would forever regret that. If there was one gang that we had to despise from the Greasers, it would be that one. There were other gangs too, but we weren't as familiar with them as the two I just mentioned.

"Wait, so he claimed to not have done it? _Again_? How long are they going to keep this up?" Rachel asked, completely annoyed.

Percy shrugged; he _was_ the one telling the story after all, and reached up to his hair to dig through it in some form of stress that was always a habit for him. In the corner of my eye, I saw Rachel blush at this, but didn't say anything else. It was obvious to everyone (except for Percy because he's always clueless when it comes to love) that Rachel had feelings for the green-eyed guy, but she couldn't do anything about it. Percy always liked Annabeth from the start, and frankly, I didn't think his feelings for her would ever change.

"Well, their little 'facade'," Leo started to say, using hand quotes, "needs to stop soon. We've already done some unforgettable things to them, and I don't think they'll want us to continue to do more."

Grover, who was sitting on the right side of me, frowned. "Well, they've done things to us too. This is nothing really new. As much as I don't really like to admit it, we're pretty much equals in this situation unless proven otherwise."

I heard some distant chattering and a few chuckling as well, and me and the rest of the gang turned to look who was making it. It was Jason's gang, of course, and they were looking at us with an amused expression. I narrowed my eyes at Jason and he smirked back at me. Grace and I go a little far back too. Nothing as severe as Percy and him, but it's still pretty cold. But if I'm being rather honest, I think the only reason why he doesn't like me even more than the rest of the gang, is because I'm more close to Percy than anybody.

He even hates me more than Annabeth, and that's saying a lot. In middle school, way before Percy and Annabeth had started dating, he used to tease us immaturely and used to think we were dating. We always scowled back at him and retorted the same about him and Reyna. He would narrow his eyes at us, but even so, he would still continue on his act. Now he's stopped that (thank God), but we still despise each other.

So I flipped him the bird and turned my back to him, and faced Annabeth. "Can you believe him? How could you know him and just..._not _suspect him for ruining things in our territory?"

But Annabeth didn't even seem to be listening to me. She looked down at her soup and that's when I noticed that she was the only quiet one out of the entire gang. That was _so_ unlike her. Normally, she would go flip a shit about Reyna, since those two had major competition with each other. She had that look on her. From spending so much time watching cop shows with Percy and Leo at my apartment, I could recognize that face from anywhere. She looked..._guilty_.

She must've noticed me staring at her because she lifted her face up to meet mine and instantly (almost _too _instantly) put on a smile. "I know, right? That's so like them!"

I frowned at her and raised my eyebrows at her, silently asking her if everything was alright. She nodded her head, getting the message, and said, "yeah, don't worry about me, Piper. I think I just ate something weird, that's all. You know how cafeteria food can get sometimes."

She laughed a little, probably an attempt to lighten the mood, and turned to listen to Percy again, who was now fuming once again about him and Jason's argument, while the rest of the gang chuckled and agreed along with him as he spoke.

But at this point, I really couldn't have cared less anymore. There was only one thought that was running through my head, and I found myself looking at a certain blond-haired and grey-eyed girl more than often.

What was Annabeth hiding from us?

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**A/N: Suspicions, suspicions. Piper's onto her, so you better watch out, Annabeth! So thanks for all the reviews from the first chapter; they really were much appreciated! I hope you guys stick around until the end of this story! And if I'm worth the review, please do! (Ugh, yes, I know that rhymed and sounded cheesy, but I just wanted to get the message out!)**

**Till next time,**

**Penguin**


	3. Stupid Socs

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Percy Jackson characters at all or any ideas from the novel, ****_The Outsiders_****, at all.**

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I had been keeping a really good eye out about anything suspicious that had to do with Annabeth ever since then. It occurred to me that I may just be over analyzing the situation. I mean, maybe she just might have been tired that day. Or maybe what she had been eating was a little bit rotten after all. I don't know. But it was really stupid of me to be suspicious of one of my closest friends like that.

She was Percy's _girlfriend_, after all. She tells Percy everything. And I trust Percy enough to know that he won't hide anything important from me or the rest of the gang. So I kept quiet. I didn't say anything. And besides, it wasn't like she was allied with the Socs or anything. She's not stupid enough to do _that_. She knows our history with them. After all, she's the one who practically taught _us _some differences between the two sides.

So I shouldn't be worrying, then. I was cut off from my thoughts as I heard the door swing open. I was expecting it to be Percy or Leo or one of my other friends, but to my surprise, it was none of them. But that didn't stop the sheer amount of annoyance that was used in my voice as I spoke. "Where have you _been_? I haven't seen you for ten days straight! You could have at least _called _or something!"

"Sorry, Pipes. You know how my work gets. I need to be there constantly nowadays, especially after what happened to the field," my dad stated, dropping off his keys near the coat rack, as if this conversation was just something that they had everyday. Actually, that was sort of true. He never took me seriously whenever I spoke to him in this kind of tone. And I was pissed.

I knew he left for a good reason; he was _the _Tristan McLean. He was practically famous, for all those who respected Greasers. He used to be an actor a while ago, but he retired after I was born, claiming that he had to take care of me since my mother abandoned me with him. Left the _burden _on him. But now, he just mostly works at the field, trying to clean up the mysterious mess that I was talking about earlier.

And yeah, sure it was a good cause and stuff. But it wouldn't hurt to _tell _me where he disappeared every morning! I knew he came back every night; I could hear the door swinging open. But it was either because I had school the next day, and Annabeth might kill me if I was late _again_, or he would fall asleep too early before I even got the chance to wake him up.

"I think I may know who ruined the fields again. It's obvious, isn't it?" I started to say, as my father raised his eyebrow at me.

"Who?" he asked.

"The Socs, of course. They're obviously trying to get back at us for completely trashing their cars last year for a prank, remember? Either that, or they're jealous becau-" I didn't even get to finish my sentence before my dad dug his face into the palms of his hands and sighed exasperatedly. "What?" I said defensively.

He shook his head tiredly, still not looking up at me, and replied, "For the sixth time, Piper. It's not them," then he dropped his hands and looked at me straight in the eye, "this immature teenage rivalry between the two of the sides needs to stop. You can't keep blaming everything on the Socs, Piper. You need to think-"

"I'm not blaming it on them! Well, actually I am, but I know they did it! They _had _to do it," I exclaimed with emphasis on my words, "and it's not only a teenager thing, dad! You guys hate the Socs just as much as we do!"

We've had this conversation _so _many times. My dad was a lot more calm than most Greasers you see around here, and he didn't really hate the Socs (or he didn't really show it much) as much as everyone else around here did. Seriously, I was getting really sick of that. I just wished he could show some emotion, _any _type of emotion towards the Socs.

Nowadays, he didn't really act much like a Greaser. Yes, he still had many qualities that defined him as one, but it still wasn't enough. He was literally as confusing as it can get. "Yeah, but we don't do roughhousing, and you know that more than anyone! We keep it silent. How else are we going to survive without the Socs?"

And that was basically an example of why my dad was so confusing. "...What? We could survive fine-_everybody _could survive fine without the Socs. They're just a bag of dead weight!"

That was also the first time I ever saw my dad glare at me. "Piper!" He yelled at me. I frowned; I never saw this side of him before, at least not directed at me. "Don't you ever speak like that, you hear me? You don't know anything about them! Things are rough _all _over, not just with Greasers."

"Why do you always take _their _side for things, huh?" I asked, truly confused. Why was my dad acting like this?

He groaned again and lightly face-palmed, as if he was already tired of talking to me. "It's nothing. You're too young to understand."

There was nothing but silence as I began to let that sink in. If he couldn't tell me something as simple as why he found the Socs less nauseating than everybody else, than how could I trust him with something even more important than that? I shook my head at him with disbelief, even though he couldn't see me behind his covered eyes. "Fine, then. Maybe at school things will be different, now that you 'explained' everything," I muttered sarcastically.

But that got his attention. "School?" he asked, raising his eyebrows once again. "But, Pipes, your school didn't even start yet this year."

My eyes grew wide as I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out of it. Is he being serious right now? "Dad! My school started one month ago! How have you not noticed?"

"Really?" he frowned, making me even more annoyed at him, "I didn't know that."

"I told you like every single day that you were actually _with _me and not preoccupied with everything else!" He looked down a little, as if he was a little bit guilty, but I was too mad at the moment to soften up to him like I normally do. "I keep on telling you about stuff that happens in school for the past month! Have you really not been paying attention to a word I say?"

He was still quiet for about a few more seconds, so I just gave up. I knew he wasn't really around much, but this was going way too far. "You know what? Just forget it. It's time for my shift at the diner anyways," I mumbled quietly, but loud enough for him to hear just how irritated I was at him.

I grabbed the keys that my dad had dropped off, and without another word, I stalked out the door.

* * *

Normally my shift was late in the night, not around two in the afternoon, but I needed to get away from my father for a little bit. Which was kind of ironic, considering that he's almost never around and I usually didn't want to get away from him when he was actually with me. It was that reason, and also because Grover, who actually did have the shift at this time, was busy doing something and he asked me to work for him as a favor, and I could keep the money that I earned.

I told him I would do it for him, but I wouldn't keep the money. We argued about that for a little while, but I insisted and eventually, he gave in. He kept it a secret from everybody else, but to the gang, we all knew he was in debt. Really, really badly.

Anyways, it was nearing the end of the shift and I was in the middle of cleaning the counter because one of the newbies accidentally spilled a strawberry smoothie all over it, when two people walked inside arguing rather loudly. I (and the rest of the customers at the diner) looked up to see who was making the noise, and the rag I was using to clean the table was stopped short at the sight.

Annabeth and her mom, Athena, were in the middle of a heated argument and it looked like things were getting pretty serious between the two of them. They sat at a corner table and continued to whisper harshly to one another, all the while trying to pretend nothing was going on. Curious, I finished up cleaning the counter and grabbed a nearby notepad and a pen and walked towards them. "May I take your order?" I asked them, gesturing to the pad and pen in my hands.

That made them stop talking, and they both turned to look at me. "Piper?" Annabeth said in surprise. "I though Grover worked this shift."

I shrugged, "He's a little busy, so I'm helping him out a bit. Are you two doing alright?"

The mother and daughter glanced at each other before putting their focus on me once again. "Um, yeah, we're fine. We were just arguing about the new homework assignment my history teacher gave me. I didn't know what to do it on."

I frowned. That was an obvious lie. Annabeth was _never _clueless when it came to assignments. But her face still had a reassuring smile on, so my defenses crumbled immediately. "We were just about to go to the library after this to return my book, now that I know I won't be needing it," she said while glaring at her mother.

It was then that I noticed the book that was sitting on the table in front of her. The cover was brown and the pages looked yellow-ish, which made it seem old. The label in the corner of the book confirmed it was from the library, and it happened to be walking distance from the diner. "I can take it there if you want. I mean, my shift is ending in like a couple of minutes and I can bring someone else to take your order for you."

'No, no it's fine," Annabeth started to say.

"No, seriously. You guys look like you need to work something out anyways." Part of the truth. Yes, I did it for them, but some of it was because I still didn't want to go back home and confront my dad again. Looking at Annabeth and her mother fighting like that reminded me of us.

She smiled again hesitantly. "Well, if you're sure..."

"Yes, Annabeth," I said, already taking the book in my hands. "It's not a big deal."

"Well, okay then." I smiled at her and walked to the sign-out paper, and ended my shift after taking their order.

As soon as I walked outside of the diner, I breathed in, taking in the autumn scent of October. It was another beautiful day outside, but my mood couldn't really be affected by it much. The bright colors of the leaves around me didn't make it any better either. I was lost in my thoughts once again when I felt something bump against my shoulder. Hard.

The effect of the hit made me drop the book on the ground, and I reached to pick it up. "I'm really sorry about that. I wasn't watching where I was going. I needed to-" a male voice said, also reaching down for the book.

I cut him off, still not looking at him, "It's fine, really. I wasn't thinking either, I just..." I trailed off as I looked up to see the man's face. Mine completely morphed into an irritable one as soon as I figured out whose it was, matching his face perfectly.

"You," Jason unnecessarily pointed out, picking up the book and standing.

I stood also and crossed my arms over my chest and replied bitterly, "Me."

He scowled, "what are _you_ doing here?"

"It's the _sidewalk_, Grace," I said as if I was talking to a little child. "Even _I_ am allowed to walk on it, you know. Sorry if your proud arrogant mind didn't get that."

He continued to glare at me for a good while, and I put my hand out, gesturing to the book in his hands. "Are you gonna give me that back or what? 'Cause I'm pretty sure you're not gonna _read _it."

He looked back at it, as if just noticing he was still holding it and smirked. "No. I think I'm going to hold on to it for a while."

I frowned at him and made an attempt to grab the book quickly. It didn't work of course, because he yanked it back. Which, of course, only made his smirk wider and his confidence grow bigger. "What do you want, Blondie?"

He shrugged playfully, "Why does there always have to be something?"

I raised my eyebrow. "I could be asking you the same thing."

He shrugged again. "Fine. I just want you tell Jackson to back off."

"And why would I do that?"

"Because we didn't do anything. God, for once in your life can you guys just knock it off and look at the facts instead of making assumptions?" He said, annoyed. I was about to retort back when I looked at his face, this time more properly. Instead of seeing a cocky reaction like I was sort of expecting to see, it looked different. Sure, it still seemed a little like that, but I could see it in his eyes that he looked...well, desperate.

Desperate as if he was tired of the same old argument as much as I was. I mentally shook my head from those thoughts and glared at him. Socs didn't have a heart; it had always been that way. And Jason Grace, of all people, wasn't going to change that fact. I snorted, "But those _are _the facts. If it's not you guys, then who else could it be? If you have the answer to that question, then we'll leave you alone."

He groaned. "I'm never going to get you guys," he muttered, rolling his eyes. "I need to go now."

"Yes, you do," I said truthfully, "there is no way I would be spotted with someone like _you _in public."

To my surprise, he actually nodded in agreement, though that made sense, but it was still weird seeing him agree to something I said. "Whatever, Greaser. Just take your stupid book and leave me out of it," he stated while pushing the book into my hands, as if he couldn't be any more happier that he got rid of it, and before I could say any other word, he walked by me once again.

He made sure to bump my shoulder like he did the first time, and if anything, the impact was even harder than before.

I already had saw it coming, so I tightened my grip on the book so it wouldn't fly away again. I turned to glare at his stupid blond cocky-self that was currently laughing his head off one last time before walking towards the library, already regretting that I had agreed to do this small favor for Annabeth.

Stupid Socs.

* * *

**A/N: Okay, that did not go like I had planned it would at all. I'm not sure if I'm satisfied with it or not, but I hope you guys were with this chapter. Review, please and tell me what you think!**

**Till next time,**

**Penguin**


	4. Hamburgers, Nachos, and Excuses

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Percy Jackson characters at all or any ideas from the novel, ****_The Outsiders_****, at all.**

* * *

"Where's Percy and Annabeth?" Leo asked me for about the umpteenth time that day. It was a Saturday afternoon and the gang decided to go bowling today, since there was nothing really else to do.

We offered to help clean up the fields before coming here, but we were immediately pushed away because most of the adults knew us pretty well, and they said, and I quote, "We don't want help from a couple of reckless teenagers who'll do nothing except make the situation worse."

Instead of those hurtful words bringing down our pride, however, it only made us try our best to hide our smirks. We remember _very _well about how that turned out last time we tried to help out. To say the least, none of us are really good at gardening, or even cleaning up in that matter. Sure, we tried our best to fix that when it came to the crops the first time it was damaged, but the results were horrendous.

We didn't know where to grow the crops, and when we asked for help, we didn't know _how _to grow the crops. There was literally dirt sprung _everywhere_, and even for a crop plain, that's not entirely a good thing. And the weather that day just made everything totally worse. It was nearing about one hundred degrees that afternoon, and that completely jammed up our cranky level to near explosiveness. Even the adults were getting pissed, let alone the teenagers.

We still offer to help out from time to time, but it really doesn't do much. And ever since that incident, we get a lot more glares from the adults than before. Even my dad practically begged me to never come again. "I told you Leo, they're in the bathroom," I stated quite irritably, snapping out of my thoughts.

He got quiet again, and when I turned to look at him to see why that was, he looked like he was deep in thought. And then he turned to me with a disgusted face as if just noticing something. "Wait. They went _together_ at the same time?"

I frowned at him, knowing that he was implying something but I didn't know what, and replied, "Yeah, so?"

He smirked, "Oh, nothing. I was just wondering when they're going to be coming back, that's all."

I stared at him blankly for a while before my eyebrows shot up in realization. I laughed a little as I got his perverted observant and punched him in the arm. I was always the late one whenever it came to these type of jokes. Yeah, I got it after a while of contemplating it, but I was mostly just out of it. And I had a lot more things to think about than what Annabeth and Percy were doing in the _bathroom_.

Grover, who was sitting across from us, shrugged, not hearing the joke, and said, "Should I just check on them and see if they're doing alright? They've been gone for over ten minutes now."

"Okay," Rachel said, staring off into space. Rachel also seemed pretty out of it these days. More so than usual, anyways. I always wondered what she thought whenever she zonked out like that. Of course, I'm not stupid enough to ask her so straight forwardly, for someone's own business is their own, and I wasn't going to butt into it if they didn't want me to know.

Grover stood up from his seat and walked towards the restroom. "It's almost two in the afternoon now. Should I buy us some food?" Rachel asked, the disappearance of Grover bringing her back to reality.

I shrugged and asked. "Yeah, sure. Do you need some money?" I already knew she didn't really need money, since she was the richest one out of the gang, but I still asked it anyway.

"Nah, it's fine," she replied hastily, and not even waiting for me to say anything back to her, "I have enough." And she too also walked away from the group, heading to the snack bar.

It was a nice comfortable silence between me and Leo, and we didn't want to ruin it. We didn't talk much anymore. Yeah, sure, we joke around a lot and sometimes rarely we actually have a normal conversation, but if Percy was with us, we three would be a riot.

I remembered I had invited them over to my house a long time ago, and we literally knocked over all of the furniture after watching an episode of a TV show and ranting on and on about how some characters in there were just plain stupid. We didn't even know how we did it, but we sure had a lot of explaining to do when my dad came an hour later.

About a couple of minutes later after Rachel left, Grover returned from the restroom, closely followed by Percy and Annabeth. The couple's clothes were a little bit wrinkled and Percy's hair looked like a tornado had thrown up all over it, both of their faces flushed. Grover himself looked a little bit red, but I suspected it was from a completely different reason, and when he opened his mouth to explain, I was right.

"Oh my God, you will not _believe _what I saw when I walked in there. And it's a public restroom for God's sake!," he started, his face getting more red by the second, "Annabeth was sitting on the sink, her legs wrapped around Percy, and Percy was-"

"Okay, Grover. I'm pretty sure they don't want to hear the details," Percy said, glancing at us with a sheepish expression.

"No, no, please. Continue speaking," Leo said next to me, and like me, he too was also laughing at the three's expression, teary eyed from chuckling so much, when they had walked out of the restroom and also the short explanation that Grover tried to give.

Annabeth glared at Leo from the corner of her eye. "You perverted little freak!"

Leo just raised his hands in fake surrender and continued chortling. We sobered up pretty fast once Rachel returned, carrying a couple of bags of food. "Guess who I met at the snack bar," she said darkly, distributing the hamburgers and the nachos that she brought us to everyone in the gang.

Percy frowned, "Who?"

The question didn't even need to be answered because someone spoke from right behind me, clearing everybody's head immediately."I didn't know you guys liked bowling. I always thought you guys were the movies kind of people, you know, always taking the lazy side of things."

We all didn't have to even turn around to look who it was; there was only one person who would be that snarky towards us so straight forwardly in a public place. "Well, I guess that's another thing you're too ignorant enough to know about, Grace." Percy snarled back, standing up from his seat and glaring at the blond-haired Soc.

I looked behind him and saw that his gang was also with him at the bowling ally, but at a different table of course. Jason must have noticed us sitting here and decided to ruin our day once again. "Shouldn't you guys be at your little field instead of being here, fixing things up there?" he spat at us, glaring at Percy.

"Well, we would if the adults would let us," Grover muttered, annoyed.

Jason snorted, "I can see why they wouldn't."

I slammed my fingers on the table and stood up, spinning around to shoot daggers at the stupid smirking idiot in the eye. "That's it. What's the _real_ reason you decided to show your face to us at this time of day? It's not school, so you're not forced to interact with us."

He smiled a teasing smile once he saw me rant out like that at him, and replied, completely ignoring what I had just said, "Did you do what I asked?"

I frowned. "Huh?"

He rolled his eyes. "You know, what I told you to do if I gave you back the book." I blinked at him.

"Piper? What's he saying?" Rachel asked me, confused as hell. That was understandable though. I hadn't told the gang about my little encounter with the Soc yet. Normally whenever Greasers and Socs interact with each other, they're usually with their gang so they wouldn't get jumped. 'Jumped' as in meaning that the Socs wouldn't beat you up just for simply seeing you alone. I _had_ warned you that there was a lot of roughhousing where we lived.

That's why it was never safe to walk alone on the streets of this city in Oklahoma. There's no telling of when you could possibly get jumped by a Soc. I could tell they go a little bit easier on women than men, but that was only a few rare Socs. And if I'm being honest, I've never seen Jason or any of his really close friends jump a Greaser with no reason at all in my life.

I tried to remember what he was talking about as I remembered that day he bumped into me, making me drop that old book Annabeth told me to return to the library. I remembered that when he figured out it was me that he bumped into, he still took the book in his hands and wouldn't give it back after I told him rudely to do so. But what did he tell me to do if he gave me back the book?

...Oh. Oh, yeah. To tell Percy to take it more easy on the Socs with the whole crop-damaging-thing. "No, I didn't. Because I told _you _that unless you had a better reason about what happened to our fields, then we would keep going on about it," I told him with a straight face.

I was close enough to him that I could see every single reaction that went through his face that you couldn't see if you weren't up close. But considering he was talking to us from right behind the seat I was sitting in and I was now standing right in front of him, I could see it. It went from a smirking expression, to a confused one, then morphed into straight-out annoyance. He shook his head at me, as if he was reprimanding me.

"You have no idea what you just caused by doing this, Greaser. You can't keep blaming us for that. Especially not when the answer to it was right in front of you this entire time." And then he did something strange. I wouldn't have been able to see it if I was sitting in my seat along with the rest of the gang, minus Percy (who was now trying to melt Jason to the ground just with his eyes).

Jason had glanced quickly to the seat at the right of Percy, and when I turned back to look, I saw that he was actually looking at Annabeth just for a split second. I frowned again and turned back to him, watching him as his previous smirk returned to his face.

I studied his expression for a little while longer and that's when I knew that he had wanted for me, and _only _me, to see what he had done in Annabeth's direction. Once he figured out I understood, he finally stopped smirking at me, and surprisingly, his reaction turned into one that was _way_ too serious for my liking.

He raised his eyebrows at me and muttered, just so I could only hear, "I gave you a better reason, McLean. But the question is: what do _you _plan on doing about it?" After a few seconds of silence between the two of us, he turned around and as if he hadn't even given a single glance at us, he walked away back to where his gang was waiting for him.

I was still staring at him blankly for a while, wondering what the heck just happened, when Rachel tugged on my arm. "Dude. What was that about?" She asked me again.

I sat back down in my seat and sighed, looking at all of them with a defeated expression. I looked at Annabeth, trying to figure out what Jason was trying to subtly tell me about her, and I found that she had the same exact reaction as the rest of the gang. I shrugged it off for now; I couldn't zone out when everyone was staring at me in confusion.

So I told them the story of when I had met Jason again on the sidewalk. After I was done explaining, Annabeth was the first one to speak. "So...what did he say to you before he left? He mumbled something quietly to you, and that was it."

I frowned even more at her. Should I tell them? Of course I should. They're my fellow gang members. It would be wrong of me to hide something this important from them. But then I looked at the way Percy was gripping Annabeth's hand like it was some type of lifeline, and about how much he seemed to be more protective of her ever since they started going out.

I couldn't explain it to him that his own girlfriend could possibly be the very reason that the crop field keeps on getting destroyed! At least, not now. Especially when I don't even know the full reason behind it. So why do I feel so wrong inside? Like I'm betraying my own gang about not speaking up when I'm given the chance? I sighed for about the hundredth time ever since Jason left and looked back up at them, shrugging it off and putting my acting skills to the test.

"It was nothing. Just another one of his lame comebacks towards the Greasers," and to throw them off subject a little bit, "and would you please stop hogging all of the nachos, Leo? We want to eat some too, you know!"

* * *

**A/N: So, yeah. That pretty much gave you guys a little more input about the mystery with Annabeth. And don't stress about this too much. You're probably going to found out about it in the next chapter, so stay tuned for that! Review?**

**Till next time,**

**Penguin**


	5. Problems

**A/N: Alright, in this chapter Piper gets a little more insight about what's going on with the Socs and why Jason cares so much about everything that's been going on lately, and...other stuff. And there's one more thing I need to get out about Annabeth before you start reading on.**

**To one of the guest reviewers who was basically threatening Annabeth if she was the one who destroyed the crops...calm down. Don't get too worked up about her because you still barely even know what she did, and please cut her ****_some _****slack, because there's still a lot more she's going to be taking part of in this story. But I do love your enthusiasm to the story (even though it may be slightly off guard)!**

**Okay. That's pretty much it. Hope you enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Percy Jackson characters at all or any ideas from the novel, ****_The Outsiders_****, at all.**

* * *

"Father! I told you I wasn't going to do that anymore!" My footsteps stopped as I heard the statement. I was walking back from school, silently muttering curse words in my head, remembering just how bad my day was. After gym today, I was taking a shower in one of the shower rooms after we were done with the period when I walked back to get my clothes in the girls' locker room.

Drew and Lacy were having a fight with each other, and when I was putting my pants on, Lacy accidentally spilled water all over my pants. I was going to shrug it off and say it wasn't a big deal, but Lacy insisted and made me wear one of her spare jeans shorts she had with her, and just to make sure I wouldn't change out of the shorts, she grabbed the jeans from my hands and locked it in her locker. Needless to say, I got a bunch of wolf-whistles and cat-calls for the rest of the day directed at me. The people who did that, however, also got a few kicks and punches in places men never want to be kicked or punched.

I was about to turn into an alley so I could continue my walk home when I heard the commotion. Now don't get me wrong; I was never one to eavesdrop, but I recognized the voice way too well to just _not_.

"Well, why wouldn't you, Jason? This has been the family dream all of our history and lives!" I peeked my head around the corner to get a better view at the people who were talking. Jason, of course, was standing in front of another taller version of him but with dark hair, and he looked like he was complaining about something. I rolled my eyes; what else was new?

"How come Thalia doesn't have to participate in the family business?" The shorter blond-haired teenage boy exclaimed, crossing his arms over his chest. I glared at him even though they couldn't see us. Oh, too bad. Every single Greaser I knew suffered, practically _dying_ to find a job to pay off their debts, and he had the guts to say that he didn't _want_ a job? How sick.

The older man, who I knew to be Jupiter Grace, one of the most top businessmen in the state and also happened to be Jason's dad replied, rolling his eyes, "Thalia's a woman, Jason. You know they can't handle big opportunities."

Jason frowned, "that's incredibly sexist, father," he retorted back, surprising me. "Reyna's mother is the one who actually works the most in her family. And she most definitely is not a man."

That was definitely not something I was expecting from him. Jason Grace at school seemed like the most cocky, most..._sexist _person in the universe. This was most certainly not an example of that.

His father smirked, "yes, but Reyna's family is the only excuse. Reyna's a good girl, she is. I like her. When are you thinking about taking her out on a date?"

To my shock, Jason rolled his eyes at the statement. "I told you for about the billionth time, father. I don't have any of those type of feelings for her. She means nothing to me in a romantic type of sense. I don't know why you want me to be with her like that so much."

I raised my eyebrow; if Reyna heard him say _that _about her, she'd be heartbroken no doubt. Oh, well.

Jason's father narrowed his eyes for a while before saying in conclusion, "you'll come around to the idea eventually."

I barely even heard him mumble the words, "I highly doubt it," before his dad shook him off and began speaking again, back to their previous discussion.

"Anyways, the point is that there's no getting out of this job. I'm your father, and I know what's best for you, and this job opportunity is _it_. As soon as you finish college, you'll be starting it immediately," Jason opened his mouth to speak his opinion, but his father cut him off once again, "I'm going to go get coffee. Are you going to come with me?"

Jason shook his head, completely annoyed with his father, while the latter shrugged and walked towards the coffee shop a couple of yards away from where they were standing.

I waited until his father was completely out of our sight, before I walked out of my hiding space and into Jason's view. He immediately frowned when he saw me, whereas I had a growing smirk on my face. It seemed as if our places had been switched; for once _he_ was the one suffering and I was the bystander. The nasty part in me knew that it felt good, for once.

"Nice argument," I said smugly at him.

He snorted and replied bitterly, "trust me. We've had worse," and he continued staring at me for a good while. Long enough that I actually started to get uncomfortable.

I shifted my weight to my other foot and crossed my arms defensively. "What?"

He smirked, "nothing."

I noticed how his eyes swept over my body and trailed down my legs (that were _still_ in those stupid fucking shorts) slowly before looking at the ground, furrowing his eyebrows as if he was confused as to why he had done such an act. Normally, I would have been mad if boys had done that to me like they had today, but right now, after what I had just heard, I just found it a little bit amusing. "Are you checking me out, Grace?"

He gazed back up and glared at me. "Please. There's nothing _to _check out," he retorted at me, but I could notice a red fuzz coming around his neck, and his eyes glazed back down to the ground, the confused expression reappearing on to his face again.

I frowned. Why was he acting this way? I was only joking when I had asked him that question, but he seemed to be taking it seriously, judging how he was focusing his eyes on everything but on me. But before I could react in any way, his smirk came right back onto his face, and I rolled my eyes. "Whatever. See you at school, you big stump," I glared at him and walked by him without either of us saying another word or even another insult to each other.

And that was a first.

* * *

God damn Tuesday Cleaning Day. I hated it like hell. There was nothing better than spending the entire night, and a _school _night, just locked up at home, cleaning every single dirty speck in the house like some depressed dog. Seriously, I found things that I really didn't mind never seeing again in my life!

But I knew I shouldn't be complaining. The whole reason this specific wretched day even existed in my life was because of me. And Leo and Percy. Remember when I had told you the other day in the bowling alley when I had invited them over to my house and we messed everything up because we were hating on a bunch of characters from a TV show? Well, this was now my punishment.

So every Tuesday I had to clean my heart out in the apartment. The first couple of Tuesdays I felt a little guilty...but you and I both know that that feeling totally wears out after a while. Ever since then I had made a mental note to never do something as stupid as to let Percy and Leo come over to my house and watch a whole marathon of _Pretty Little Liars. _I was going to go to _their _houses next time and wreck havoc in it like they had shamelessly done with me. They completely deserve it.

I was cleaning out my father's room for about the fourth time that month, when I knocked a box that was sitting on one of the top drawers over. Since my dad had hardwood floors, it made a rather loud noise than it would have made on carpet. "Is everything okay up there?" My dad yelled from downstairs.

I picked up the wooden box that had now opened slightly and yelled back downstairs, "yeah! I just knocked something over!"

"Don't break anything, will ya?" He said, and I snorted as I caught the worry in his voice when he said that. _Every _single Tuesday Cleaning Day I break something, and he knows it more than anyone. I'm about as clumsy or klutzy as it can get. Especially when it comes to organizing.

"Too late," I muttered to myself, eyeing the box that now had a minor dent and a few scratches on the top base of the box. No harm was done elsewhere and I put the box back up on the drawer.

My thoughts (like usual nowadays) were probably somewhere else because I may have accidentally placed the box upside down because a piece of smooth paper fluttered down from the box.

I reached down to the square piece quickly so I could put it back in the box before my dad noticed why it was taking so long to clean his room, and tentatively picked it up, flipping it over to see what was so special about it that it had to be put into a wooden box. And I swear to God my heart stopped for a couple of seconds before my brain slowly started to comprehend what I was actually seeing.

A photo.

Of two people to be exact.

There was my father wearing a dark blue T-shirt and a Yankees hat. His dark brown eyes gleamed with excitement and his smile was so bright and wide, one could possibly become blinded by it. He was looking at a woman next to him as if she was the most endearing thing he had ever seen in his life. There was one simple word that described his reaction perfectly in the picture. And it was one that was so foreign to me, I almost didn't even recognize it. Especially not on _his _face of all people. He looked...happy. Truly, truly happy.

"Are you alright up there, Pipes?" My father called up to me once again. His voice sounded a little more closer than before, and I got the hint that judging from his voice, he was probably standing at the base of the stairs. I chose to ignore him and continue staring at the picture that was in between my fingertips.

I blinked a couple of times at his un-moving face and let my eyes trail over to the woman next to him, and I wasn't surprised when a small gasp of shock escaped out me. The woman was...she was incredibly beautiful, to say the least. She had long, flowing brunette hair that glinted a little bit blond in the sunlight, and the length seemed endless. She had a caramel-bronze skin tone and she looked back at my father with the same look he was giving her.

My eyes furrowed in confusion as I squinted to see the color of the woman's eyes. She had the same color as...mine. I always thought that the way my eyes shifted into different colors was weird, and I never liked how it looked on me, but this woman...she actually seemed to make it work. The iris' looked like they were in the middle of changing from a vibrant sea green into a light shade of a sweet honey brown.

I just stood there for a good six seconds. Seven. And then I gathered up my courage and walked out of the room, carrying the picture with me as I stalked down the stairs. "Oh, thank God. I thought you were hurt or something when you didn't respond the first time! What's wrong?" my father asked, now taking in the confused and slightly perturbed expression I probably had on my face.

"Who is this?" I demanded as soon as I was at his level, stopping two stair steps in front of him so I could look at him in the eye without turning my head up.

"What..." but he trailed off as he glanced at the picture in my hand. He blinked and then frowned, and I could almost see his thought process that was going through his brain as to what he was going to say to me. "Oh."

"Oh, what? Who is she? Was this some woman that you fell in love with before mom? What were you guys doing at the carnival? Were you guys on a date? Why did you look so happy being with her?" I felt the heat go up to my face as I realized just how much I actually cared about the woman in the picture, and somehow, that made me even more angry at my father. "No. Are you _still _with her? Why haven't you told me about this?! Why does she..." I stopped once I noticed my dad's face.

It was...blank. As if he didn't even know what to say. Shocked was just an understatement of how he must be feeling. Why did he hide this from me, if the picture and the woman in it was so important to him? "Dad! _Please_ say something!"

He began to blink again, as if time was suddenly jump-starting back to the present, and his head snapped up to look at me. "I...Piper. She is...she _was_...a very important woman in my past life."

"Oh, really?" I glared at him, and turned back to the picture and frustrated, pointed out their hands that were linked together in the photo. "Then _that's _what this probably means then!" I said sarcastically, looking hard at his face to see his reaction to how I was behaving.

I know I was being really unreasonable with him, and I was probably acting like an annoying brat, but right now, I really couldn't care less. I already had a hinting suspicion in my mind about the woman, but I wanted to hear him admit it. Admit that the very woman in the picture that was holding my father with such a love, Romeo and Juliet (even though they were fictional characters) might have even been jealous of them, was my mother that had given birth to me and left me and my father all alone to take care of ourselves.

"Okay, okay. Piper...she's your mother," he said solemnly. "Your...actual birth mother."

I nodded my head, already figuring that out, and replied, "but why? Why have you been hiding her from me?"

"Because..." my father looked like he was almost in tears by now, and I almost felt sympathy for him, but I knew it was enough. I had to know the truth; no more lies. "You know how I told you she...abandoned us, right?"

I nodded numbly again and motioned for him to continue. "Well...I lied about that part." I opened my mouth in shock and was about to say something, but my dad continued. "She...she didn't abandon us. She would _never _abandon us. I was...I was stupid when I said that she did to you."

"But...why did you lie?" I asked, still confused. None of this was making any sense. I frowned again, "did she...pass away?"

My father looked down again and didn't say a word. It wasn't needed though. The silence was enough for her to understand. I hadn't even noticed that I scooted over to the right so my dad could sit next to me on the steps, or that we hadn't said a word for eight minutes straight, just taking that new piece of information in. But I wasn't surprised I wasn't crying though. Even though now I knew that my mother was actually a good person, that still didn't make up for the sixteen years I was left alone, not knowing anything about her, even if it wasn't her fault.

I was about to ask again about the reason of why he lied to me about my mother's disappearance or how she died, but one turn to look at him made me backtrack my words immediately. His shoulders were hunched in a defeated way, his eyes were still glistening with tears while a few escaped his eyelids, and he just looked so...so broken. The complete opposite of the person that was standing next to my mother in the picture.

I had a sudden urge to just spring forward and wrap my arm tightly around my father's shoulders to give him comfort, letting him know that I forgave him for never being there for me for the past years, and just to simply let him know that he still had me, if not anybody else. But I am stupid. I am stubborn, and I am grudge-full, and I am stupid. I am everything my father was to me, if not worse.

Just because I walked straight up the stairs, not even giving a second glance at him once.

* * *

**A/N: I was actually just going to keep the second part and not the first, but I decided to write a little bit of Jasper since this story had pretty much close to nothing of it. And also because I wanted to show you guys a little bit about what the Socs would have to go through, hence the title of this story, "Rough All Over". Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this chapter even though it didn't feature much about Annabeth's mystery. But it's coming soon, I promise. And so is Jasper, but maybe a little bit _less _sooner.**

**Please click the button down there that says, "Review", and tell me what you think!**

**Till next time,**

**Penguin**


	6. Secrets Revealed

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Percy Jackson characters at all or any ideas from the novel, ****_The Outsiders_****, at all.**

* * *

It was the next day after school, and Annabeth and I were hanging out at my house to spend the night. Normally we didn't have these type of sleepovers on a school night, but Annabeth just decided that she could change into whatever she was going to wear tomorrow for school and just walk with me. That was perfectly fine with me. And besides, Percy would be happy about this news.

And it wasn't really a _sleepover _sleepover, it was more like a tutoring-session/doing-your-homework sleepover. Yipee to that. Seriously, I'd give anything for Annabeth to just _shut up _about school. But at the same time, I knew she was somewhat right about working harder in school. As much as I hate to admit it, I really needed all the help I could get.

"Annabeth?" I asked, looking at my paper to see if I missed something on one of the questions. It was for English, and it had asked me to answer a question from one of the excerpts that were above them. I had read them, of course, but I wasn't really paying attention to it. My mind was always somewhere else.

Annabeth looked up from the book she was reading. She had already finished all of her homework a long time ago, and now she was just waiting for me to be done, or if I needed help. Lucky butt. "Yeah?"

"What do you think is going to happen to our crops?" I was still looking at my paper instead of having my attention on her, and I was still pretending to actually be paying attention to it. For a while I actually started to focus on the words, but I looked back up questioningly when I noticed she had gone silent. "Annabeth?"

"Yeah?" she asked again, a little bit startled.

"What's going to happen to our crops?" I tried again, this time keeping my gaze focused on her, "I mean, this has been going on for a long time now, don't you think? Now it's seems like everything we do, it just keeps on getting ruined. This can't be normal, right?"

She probably noticed the worried tone in my voice because she reached out her hand to rest on my arm, as if she was trying to comfort me, but snapped it back, her eyes dipping down to the floor. "No...no, it's definitely not normal," she said quietly.

It was quiet after that. I didn't even try to pretend to be doing my work anymore because I knew she was just as much preoccupied with the situation as I was. Her and I both knew just how important the crops were to us. Without them, we'd be basically left with nothing. It was the main source to all of our agriculture. Sure, we could always plant again in other places, like in our gardens and such, but the crop fields covered _miles_ of fresh food from the ground.

The thought of all of that just disappearing one day...it freaked the jujubes out of me. "So did you have any more weird encounters with Jason?" she finally asked, probably trying to change the subject, and I was grateful for that. Even though I was the one who had brought it up in the first place, I was still a little bit iffy about the subject. It seemed like running away from my problems was always some big habit for me.

I frowned, "what do you mean?"

"I mean...you've been talking to him a lot more frequently than usual," I guess I made some really disgusted face at her because she hastily continued, "not like that, of course! I mean, like, yesterday for example, I saw you sort of eavesdropping on him and his dad when I was heading to Percy's place. Then after his dad left, you were speaking with him. That's all. And also that day in the bowling alley...I knew you were lying about the whole mumbling thing at the end..."

Wow. So I guess I wasn't the only one who could read emotions that well. But I wasn't that surprised. Annabeth was a really smart girl, and usually when she suspected something, she was right. I sighed, finally giving in, "no. I haven't ever since yesterday."

"Well, what were you guys fighting about? He seemed pretty flustered and angry at the same exact time," she said, looking at me curiously. Dang. Normally it would have creeped me out if someone had been observing me that closely as she had been, judging by her observations of me, but this was _Annabeth_ I was talking about. It's in her nature to be like this. And I knew I wasn't the one to talk. She wasn't the only one who was keeping a suspicious eye on her friends.

"Um...nothing really important..." I said awkwardly, not wanting to talk about what Jason and I were saying to each other. If I had told Annabeth that I was accusing Jason of checking me out, she would get the wrong idea about us.

"Okay..." she trailed off, raising her eyebrows at me. I put on the best innocent face I could muster, and I almost sighed in relief when she moved on. "So what was the whole issue with Jason and his dad anyway? What were _they_ fighting about?"

I shrugged, "eh. His dad was forcing him into the family business, and he didn't want to join. Can you believe him? He was practically offered one of the best jobs in the state, and he had completely refused it!" And that part was true. Jason's father was basically the owner of a lot of real-estate agencies in all of Oklahoma.

I always considered the job as incredibly boring, but I'd rather have a career and a future already planned out for me, then having to struggle my butt off trying to get _accepted _in a good job. It was really hard to find a decent career when you're a Greaser and a lot more poorer than a lot of people, just like me and my dad and a lot of my friends.

But instead of getting ticked off by this like I sort of expected Annabeth to do, she just looked down again. 'Well...I suppose that's understandable."

I just blankly stared at her. How could she say that? Annabeth was definitely one to be pissed by this. She knew just how well it was difficult to get a good job, and that's one of the reasons why she keeps on pushing everyone in the gang beyond our limits so we could achieve it rightfully. "But...but how? Annabeth...you know how difficult it is to be worth something, especially being what we are," I said, gesturing to our ratty punk-y clothes and our grease-filled hair.

She continued looking at the floor for a while before picking up her book and opening it back to her page. She made it quite clear that she didn't want to talk about this anymore, but I wasn't. I had to know what was going on. So I walked over to where she was sitting and pushed the book out of her hands and looked at her straight in the eye. "Annabeth, do you want to tell me something? I know there's something off with you lately, and you need to know that we'll be here to help you out in any way we can. You do know that, right?"

She gazed back up again and smiled sadly at me. "Yeah, I know that, Pipes."

"Good," and I sat right beside her. "So...if you want to say anything to me right now...I'll listen."

She was quiet again for a long agonizing two minutes before finally sighing and turning to look at me. "Piper...there's something you should know."

"Yeah?" I asked tentatively.

"My mom...she's not a Greaser," she said quietly, looking at the ground for about the billionth time she was here. But I wasn't focusing on that. My complete train of thought vanished once I heard those words.

"So...so she's a...a Soc? You have a Soc for a mother?" I asked in disbelief. Of all people...

But she shook her head. "No. She's not a Soc, Piper," I looked at her with a mix of confusion and relief, and she continued, "she's not even from here. She's from the outside."

I frowned at her. "So she's like...normal...?"

"Um...yeah. Why do you think I barely even see her in my life? She doesn't live here, Pipes. She wasn't even born here."

I looked down, taking all of that in. Yes, the information she had given me was new, but I still didn't get the point of bringing this up now. Having parents that were born outside of Oklahoma and weren't Greasers or Socs was completely normal. I knew a lot of people who were like that. I don't know why she felt so awkward about it. "Okay...but that's nothing bad, Annabeth. It's okay if you're mother is from the outside. What's going on?"

She sighed again, "and that's the reason why...why she doesn't care so much about what happens to the Socs...or anything that happens to the Greasers." She had said the last part slowly, as if she was trying to hint out something to me, but as always, I was still clueless as to what she was trying to say.

"...Okay."

"Yeah."

"...That's it?"

She practically face-palmed. After a while, she finally removed her hands from her face and that's when I noticed they were white. Like...paper white. Annabeth Chase was nervous. And I was about to tell her that she didn't have to continue on if she didn't want to, but she still did so I kept quiet, knowing that she had been wanting to reveal this for a long time. "My...my mother's job...she works as an architect."

My eyebrows jumped at this, and I was surprised. Like I had told you, most Greasers couldn't get that great of a career. But then again...Annabeth's mother wasn't a Greaser. "Oh. That's, um, cool."

She continued staring at me, as if expecting for me to catch on by now. I stared back at her, waiting for her to get to the point. I was tired of beating around the bush, but I would never rush Annabeth into saying something she didn't want to talk about. She could tell me on her own time.

Finally, she threw her hands up in exasperation. "Don't you get it Piper? My mother is-"

But right at that moment, before she could finish her sentence, I heard a familiar click and I turned to see Leo climb into my window (we were in my room), holding the key to get in. I gave Leo the most annoyed glare I could give since he interrupted Annabeth from saying something important, and he shot me an apologetic shrug, but it quickly went away when his expression changed into a worrisome one, and my irritation completely melted.

Judging by the way his eyebrows were scrunched up and for once, he actually looked _serious _in his life, which was a thing that happened very rarely, I knew he came to deliver some bad news.

"What's up, Leo?" I asked him, looking at him with an anxious expression of my own.

"We need to go. Now." And he practically dragged our elbows out the window. We climbed/skidded down the apartment, and once we touched the ground, I turned to Leo again.

"What's going on? Where's the rest of the gang?"

"They're already at the fields. You won't believe what we discovered," at this, he glanced at Annabeth suspiciously, and I knew whatever he had to show us would be somewhat about her. Maybe this is what Annabeth was trying to tell me after all.

"Why? What happened at the fields?" I asked him, me and Annabeth jogging to catch up with him. It was obvious we were heading to the crop plains (we've taken this route far too many times before).

"You'll see. And no more questions. It's pretty self-explanatory once we get there."

And about fifteen more minutes of jogging/running, he proved himself to be right. Because saying the entire plain was ruined, would be an understatement. In fact, we couldn't even call it a plain anymore.

There was only three things that first registered in my mind once we reached there. Number one: caution signs and caution tapes-you know, the kind that you see in construction areas that needed to be remodeled. Number two: practically hundreds of construction claws and other huge construction machines surrounding the perimeter. And finally, number three, the one thing that you could see from far away: a ditch. A huge twenty-feet-below-the-ground ditch. Our crop fields, that used to be flourishing with life and food in every single little corner of the fields, was now a dirty ditch.

There wasn't a single living creature that wasn't a human in sight. How the construction workers did it so fast, the world may never know. "Annabeth...what's going on?" I vaguely heard Percy mutter to her. I didn't even have it in me to turn away from the shocking disaster in front of my eyes to ask Percy why in the world he was pin-pointing Annabeth of all people, or why his voice seemed so betrayed-filled all of a sudden. Like he couldn't believe Annabeth had kept something important from him.

But one closer look at the construction claws that continued to destroy the one thing that completely unified the Greasers, and I understood. Every single construction machine had a golden insignia printed on a corner. Of an owl with a couple of reefs that circled it. It didn't make much sense to me, but the next thing I saw did. On one of the bigger machines, a woman walked out of. She had long black hair and intense gray eyes, ones that matched her daughter's perfectly.

She walked around for a while, and everyone she seemed to come in contact with, treated her like she was a queen. A goddess. And after a few more moments of studying her silently, I finally realized that she seemed to be in charge of something. My mind trailed off to what Annabeth had been saying earlier.

_"She doesn't live here...she wasn't even born here...that's why she doesn't care so much about what happens to the Socs...or anything that happens to the Greasers...she works as an architect..."_

Oh. Oh, no. Now this made perfect sense. How could Annabeth keep something so important like this from us? I looked back at Annabeth, and she looked just as horrified as everyone else. I glanced at Percy to see how he was reacting to this. Sadness, betrayal, and confusion were all mixed into his face. Not to mention hurt. I glanced at Annabeth once again and immediately sympathized for her. Back at my house she was trying to tell me, but she had gotten interrupted. So I guess if she was already ready to tell me everything, then she could be forgiven.

But Percy didn't know that. Neither did the rest of the gang. I, of course, would back Annabeth up because I knew she would desperately need it.

But it was still hard to ignore the fact that for the longest of time she had never told us that her very own mother was the core to the main source for all of the disasters that happened and possibly would happen.

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**A/N: I didn't really know how to end this chapter, so I just left it at that, I guess. So yeah, Annabeth's thingy is revealed, so...get ready for the next chapter! We have some Socy action and another reappearance from our favorite Socs (a.k.a. Jason and Reyna). Don't worry guys, Jasper friendship is coming up soon! I'm not gonna give any spoilers, so I'm gonna let you ponder over that...hehe.**

**(Does the cute baby seal face that Percy does) Review?**

**Till next time,**

**Penguin**


	7. Nobody Knows What To Say

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Percy Jackson characters at all or any ideas from the novel, ****_The Outsiders_****, at all.**

* * *

A couple of days later, the depressing mood that settled amongst the Greasers had never wavered. Socs still pulled pranks on us from time to time and bothered us until our brains felt like it was going to shatter, but we were too shocked from the previous days' observation to do anything about it.

The day we found about the new-found ditch, Annabeth confessed to us that her mother had been plotting to do this for a long time now. She just never had the time or enough money to do it just yet. A couple of years later after she first thought of the idea of permanently ruining our crop field forever, she had saved up and hired a bunch of other havoc-wrecking dweebs to help her out.

When we asked Annabeth why her mother wanted this to happen, she said that Athena wanted to build some type of mini town. One that would bring the Socs and the Greasers together. And the idea hadn't seemed so bad until I realized that the mini town she was creating would be located on _our _used-to-be crop field.

That "mini town" would forever take away the one thing Greasers could be proud of to call our own. Like I had said before, the fields had united all of the Greasers. It brought us together. So how the hell was Annabeth's mom going to unite the Socs and the Greasers if the Greasers weren't even together like they had used to be?

And besides that, I know that that is not the only reason why Athena wants to build that town. She wants to build it for her own personal benefit. The Greasers know it, we know it. Annabeth didn't have to explain _that _to us. After all, Annabeth already hinted out to me that since Athena wasn't from this area, she didn't give an effin' rat's skin about what happened to the Socs and the Greasers.

But even after all that Annabeth told us, the rest of the gang was still a little bit iffy about her since she never told us about it until now. So I explained to them that she was going to tell me before she knew what her mother had done, but had gotten interrupted from Leo. We were still a little bit cautious around her, but I think we're okay now.

"So...now what do we do?" Grover spoke first. It was lunch time again, and it was one of the very few times that we were actually together at all during school hours. The teachers know our reputation-all of us, not just Greasers-and they try their best to separate at least the gangs. But at lunch time, there are no obligations. We are free.

No one replied to his question for a while, and no one made any effort to do so. After all, no one actually _did _know how to answer his question. It had been haunting us for quite some time now. What _were_ we going to do? We weren't rich enough to take back our land, we weren't together like we used to be to start a riot, and we didn't have any help from anybody. We had tried to get help from the adults the moment we found out, but they resorted to telling us to do the "mature" thing and let it sort itself out.

Right. Like that's going to happen. Why do adults have to be so..._adult-y_?

"All those years of hard work...all that effort we put in...we relied so much on those fields..." Rachel said wistfully, not really answering Grover at all. For the first time since we've known each other, no one really knows what to say at the lunch table. "All gone."

"I know...our agricultural life that we once knew of...it's gone now," I put in, "we have no resources. No where else to look to. What we did to deserve this, I don't know."

"I can't believe my mom would do something like this," Annabeth said, frowning at the wooden table in front of us. "I know she never cared and she always wanted to create something that she could call her...her _own_, but...I never thought it would be like this." Her voice wavered a little at the end, and I saw Percy instinctively grab her hand from across the table.

We all knew that Annabeth's mom, even though she took her out to places, showed her things some people have never seen, was around her child more than a lot of people I've met, she was never really _there _for Annabeth. I don't think she ever really cared at all.

Of course, none of us told this to Annabeth because we weren't that cruel to voice it out loud, but we didn't need to. Our tight silence around the subject was enough for Annabeth to know that we were right about it.

Leo finally sighed. "I don't know, man...it seems like everything that actually _holds value _to us is just disappearing." And that concluded the depression conversation right then and there, and it sent us straight to our thoughts once again.

There was another uncomfortable silence again, and the food that usually would have been demolished in a couple of minutes, was still laying there, now cold and untouched. Then all of a sudden, Percy brought his hands from his face and he looked at us indignantly.

I inwardly sighed, already knowing what he was going to say. "Well, we can't just sit here and do _nothing _about it," he exclaimed, "we need to stand up for ourselves!"

I glared at him, getting really annoyed at this frequent behavior that he gets sometimes. Whenever something goes wrong, he always goes into complete hero-mode and suddenly, it's like his entire brain and common sense just shuts down. I'm usually not the one who handles these type of situations; Annabeth is, but she sure as hell isn't saying anything.

She's way too guilty to even _look _at Percy. They're still in a relationship and everything, but it's a little different now. No one says anything, but we all know that there's some major trust issues that now settled between them.

"And what? Where will that lead us?" I gestured to the rest of the cafeteria. To the Greaser gangs around us that were also more quieter than usual. To the people that had no idea what to do now. "Are you even seeing this? People are _confused_, Percy! How are we going to stand up for ourselves if we don't even know what we are anymore? These people...they have no idea what to do," he looked like he was about to retort back, so I repeated, "they have no idea what to do now that the one thing that glued us together as a whole is now gone-just like us."

At this, he closed his mouth and never opened it again for a long time. Grover sighed, "well, I need to go now. Mr. Hemmings needs me for lunch detention," when everyone looked at him weird, he just shrugged, "what? I forgot. It happens," and he left the table.

Soon after that, Leo went to go flirt with a girl from another gang, claiming that she was hot and he had nothing better to do, but we all knew he just wanted to get his mind off of all this. Rachel just plainly stated that she just didn't want to stay there and went outside to get some fresh air.

Now it was just left with us three. The tension got even more awkwarder. Ever since the incident, Percy didn't really talk to me that much anymore. I had a feeling it was because Annabeth told me more about her mother than she told Percy, which I could understand, but I still thought he was being a baby about it.

But then again, Percy had been a baby since day one, so I didn't really blame him. And he never told me that he was outwardly mad at me. I knew he wasn't _that _grudge-full. "We need to talk to somebody about this. Maybe they know more about this, and we could find some way to stop it," I said out loud, already some dark thought coming into my head.

Annabeth frowned while Percy raised an eyebrow at me, "what do you mean?"

I suddenly remembered that day in the bowling alley when Jason had glanced at Annabeth secretly. Somehow, he already had known about Annabeth's mother and he wanted only me to know about it. I figured he did that because he just wanted Percy and the others to just get off of his back once and for all, but still...I just _know _he knew something about this. I flinched, already getting a good idea about how this conversation was going to turn out. "I...I need to speak with someone."

"With who?" Percy asked, still looking at me with a peculiar expression. I could tell he wanted really badly to know why I was being so hesitant about this and why I wasn't as close to him as I used to be. Hmm. I guess Annabeth isn't the only core of Percy's trust issue list.

But I'm different. I had nothing to hide, and I sure as hell am not going to be starting now. That's why I told him the truth. "I need to talk to Jason." Percy already opened his mouth to say what looked like, _why? _but I cut him off before the word could exit his mouth. "He might know something, Percy. He...he sort of hinted it out to me that Annabeth was somehow involved in this," I confessed slowly.

"How...how would he know that?"

"I don't know," I stated exasperatedly again. "That's why I need to talk to him. He might know something," I repeated.

"Okay, but...why do _you _want to talk to him?" Annabeth finally said, subtly hinting out something that I really wasn't in the mood for. I wanted to scowl at her and yell that whatever weird thing she was thinking right now, it wasn't true. But I couldn't do that. Percy was with us, and if anything, he would be thinking the same thing that Annabeth would be if I said anything.

"Because...he hinted to _me _about your mom. So I think that whatever it is that's going on, he would tell me if there's even a lucky chance." She still looked at me weirdly so I added, "and it's not like he would talk to anybody else. He _hates_ Percy, and I don't think that would make it okay to talk to his girlfriend."

It was silent again as they thought over that. And then Percy voiced, "but...he also hates you too, you know. Even if he did hint it out before, that still doesn't change the way he feels about you."

I waved it off, "I'll figure it out. Trust me."

"Okay...but wait," I frowned, already knowing the brotherly tone in his voice that had been shifted into, "if you think I'm going to let you be alone with a _Soc_, then you're out of your mind, woman! He could-"

"What? Hurt me?"

"Yes! What makes you think that he _won't_?!" he almost screamed, his face flushing a little from the argument.

I blinked at him, actually taking that in. "I don't know," I truthfully said after another long while. "He's never really done it before...not physically...he hasn't really done it to any actual _female _before. Not that I've seen of. And I can handle myself! I have Katoptris, remember?" I said, gesturing to the long bladed pocket-knife in my, well, pocket. "And I can call you. His house may be a little more uptown, but it's not really that far away. I can just take a cab or something."_  
_

"No," Percy stated, finally giving in. "I'm going to drive you there. And I'm going to wait outside around the corner, so Grace or any of his fancy-schmancy relatives don't see me. I'm gonna make sure that you're safe. Got it?"

I groaned, "fine, then. We'll leave after school."

He nodded in agreement right when the bell rang. We threw away the food that we didn't eat (which was all of it) and headed to class without another word.

* * *

I sighed as we pulled up to Jason's house. We had never been there before; no Greaser had, but everyone in town knew where Jason's dad lived. He was like an idol here. Everyone knew him and loved him. Well, Socs did. Greasers just knew him. Percy parked around a discreet corner just like he said he would, and I got out of the car. "Hey." I turned to look at him just as I was about to slam the door shut. The entire ride there had been quiet, just like it had always been recently, so I was a little bit surprised when he talked.

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Be careful, would you? I don't want you to do something that you're going to regret in the future." Well, I sure wasn't expecting that from him. His voice seemed so much softer than it was all day. Or a month ago, really. Now that I think of it, the last time he was soft or playful with me was when he woke me up that first day of school that seemed so long ago. When he had spilled water on me and none of us had known that our lives were going to change just in a matter of weeks.

I smiled at him. "Of course, idiot. I'm not a baby anymore. I can handle myself. Seriously. Stop it."

"Yeah, I know...but you're like a sister to me, Pipes," he said, and I had a feeling that Annabeth had talked to him about her stupidly false suspicions about me and Jason. I know Percy wasn't stupid enough to believe her, but it was still a little weird. "I don't know what I would do if I lost you. What the gang would do if we lost you."

I patted his raven-haired head and said with a hint of irritation, the warm smile still plastered my face, "I appreciate it, Percy. But I'm good. I swear. Alright? I'm leaving now," and shut the door to show him so. I saw him chuckle and nod through the car window, and I waved at him before walking up to the house.

Every foot I placed in front of the other just seemed to be filled with dread. What the hell was I _doing_? Am I sending myself to my own doom? Even if Jason did talk to me, how would he? He had a mother, a sister, and a father. Yes, only three other people, but that was still a big number if you were in my position. We could be overheard so easily. And it's not like we were doing anything wrong, but I know a lot of people who would get the wrong idea.

I finally stopped in my tracks when I saw him. Or more specifically, them. Jason and Reyna were in the backyard, packing up the tables and all of the other party supplies from the night before. I don't even remember why the Grace family even threw the party in the first place, but that was normal. They always threw random celebrations from time to time. It didn't make any sense, and it disgusted me to hell that they had so much free time and money to just spend like that, but it was true.

I stood there awkwardly for a while, not sure if I should just turn back or push my courage to the test, when I realized that I didn't have much of a choice anymore once I saw a particular long black-haired Hispanic girl turn around from whatever she was doing and her eyes landed on me.

She instinctively frowned. "Jason...?" I heard her ask the boy that was still preoccupied with folding up the chairs that were around the table.

"What?" he grunted out, having trouble with folding one of them.

"...Why is Piper McLean at your house right now?"

"Huh?" he finally looked up and noticed what was going on. His back straightened once he saw me and lightly put down the chair back on the ground. "Uh...I don't know," then louder so I could hear but a little more rougher, "what _are_ you doing here?"

I finally dragged my feet a little bit closer to them, and said, "I need to talk to you. It's about Annabeth. How you...you know. With the fields and all."

"Oh," he said, his eyes narrowing, "oh, yeah, I heard. But if you're here to just start blaming it on us, you're wrong because for the last fuc-"

"I'm not here to blame it on you! I need to talk to you about how you knew about Annabeth," I realized I was losing his attention really fast because he was starting to direct it back at that stupid chair, so I hurried on, "you know...at the bowling alley? How you hinted it out it had something to do with her? I _know _you know something about this."

"What's she talking about?" Reyna asked Jason. She was now the only one who actually looked like she actually was paying attention at all. But I figured it was for a completely different reason.

"Fine. You want to talk._ Talk_. Will that make you happy?" Jason exclaimed, completely ignoring Reyna. He was still fidgeting with the chair and was still refusing to look up at me, so I sighed and walked up to him.

I grabbed the chair from his hands and reached down to unlock the lock that was preventing the chair to fold up. Once I did that, I swiftly finished folding it and handed it back to him. He looked blankly at it for a while before blinking and finally looking at me in the eye. I could tell he was annoyed that I had helped him do such an easy task for him, but I was nowhere near in the mood for another argument. I just wanted to talk and leave this place._  
_

I shifted uncomfortably. "Uh...actually I need to talk to you alone. I'm not sure if..." I trailed off awkwardly, not knowing how to end the sentence. The truth was, I didn't want Reyna overhearing anything I was going to say. It was bad enough I was going to talk to one Soc, and the worst of all of them, and I didn't want to talk to another if I didn't need to. But I wasn't going to say _that _in front of Reyna.

Thankfully or unthankfully, I'm not even sure anymore, Jason understood. "If I talk to you alone, will you leave?" he asked tiredly, not even caring anymore.

I nodded slightly, and he sighed and turned to Reyna, and she understood what was going on as well. "Wait. Why? If Piper has anything important to say, then she can say it in front of me too, can't she?"

No one said anything for a while, before Jason spoke to her again. "Look, Reyna, I'm only going to talk with her for a little while. It's probably nothing at all. You know how Greasers are. They overreact about everything," he muttered quietly. I was going to retort back, but it was true. Although this time it was different. Because I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't.

Reyna looked between the two of us suspiciously. The look that she had on...it was familiar. It was the same look Annabeth had on whenever I mentioned Jason around her. It was like she was accusing us in some way.

I frowned. Great. Now there were _two _people who think that there's something weird going on between us, if Percy's not one of them. Which he's not. This day just keeps getting better and better.

"You're gonna call me if anything goes wrong?" she finally asked him. He nodded again. "I'm gonna be right inside if you need me, alright?"

"Yes, Reyna," he drawled out, sounding as if he was being scolded by a parent.

She looked at us again and shook her head, and I wondered what the heck she was thinking right now. "Okay, then," and she left to go inside of the house.

I turned to Jason again, and I just realized where this left us. He frowned at me and looked awkwardly back at the chair and _still _continued to fidget with it, even though it was completely packed up. I fumbled with what to say for a while before everything finally dawned on to me.

I could tell he noticed because he looked back to see if Reyna had finally disappeared behind the front doors of his house. He looked back at me tensely, and I sighed.

We were now alone.

* * *

**A/N: Yes, I know I'm cruel for leaving it like that, but I was having a lot of writer's block writing this chapter and I have a feeling the next one is going to be even worse. And I didn't want to make it any more sketchy than it needed to be in this chapter. So sorry for that. Truly, I am.**

**And I know a lot of you guys are waiting for Jasper to happen, and I'm sorry that barely any happened in this chapter, but it's coming soon. Please be patient with me.**

**Review?**

**Till next time,**

**Penguin**


	8. Opening Up

**A/N: Drum roll, please...may I present to you: some well needed JASPER! Now on with the story ;)**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Percy Jackson characters at all or any ideas from the novel, ****_The Outsiders_****, at all.**

* * *

"So...are you going to tell me why you bothered to come by my house, or..." Jason gestured his hands around in a tense manner. It had been quiet for about a couple of seconds and it was noticeable he was beginning to get impatient. I had come here all this way, and I forgot what I was going to say.

Figures.

Wait. Annabeth...the ditch...how Jason knew about Annabeth and the ditch..._right_. "Um, I told you. I came here to talk to you about that day in the bowling alley. How you solely pointed out that Annabeth had something to do with this...the problem that we have currently. With the fields. Or...what it used to be."

"Okay," he started out cautiously, "what do you even want to know? From me, I mean."

"I just want to know how you knew about it," I repeated, slightly perturbed, "Like...like how did you know that Annabeth was somehow involved in this?"

He crossed his arms over his chest and sighed. "Why should I tell you that? What good will it do?"

"It might help us get more information about this entire thing. Maybe what this secluded town is going to do for the rest of us and how we're going to stop this mess from going any further," I said immediately, hopefully. I, myself, knew that it wasn't going to work this way. The ditch was happening, and no Greaser was trying to stop it, and even if we did, who knew how good that would do.

But all I knew is that I needed information. I don't know why, but it was probably something I had gotten from Annabeth. Or maybe it was just an instinct that I always had. But curiosity was now a part of me, and I had to learn to accept it whether I liked it or not.

"And you're the one who hinted to _me _about this entire thing in the first place," I added, but I soon calmed down a little bit and my eyebrows raised a little, a question rising in my head. "Why did you do that, anyway? If you were going to hint something out about Annabeth to the Greasers, why did you do it to me, instead of Percy?"

"You already know the answer to that one," he pointed out, blunt and fast. "I just wanted you to tell Percy to back off, and I thought it might humor the situation-or, at least humor _me_-if I just made you suspicious of your friend. That, and because the only way Percy would back off is if he knew that we didn't even touch your stupid crops. Anymore questions?"

I pursed my lips at him. "Yes, of course there is. You're completely avoiding the main question I came here with, doofus"-he rolled his eyes at the comment-"how did you know about Annabeth to begin with?"

"And you're missing another question I had asked before, _doofus_," he sneered, saying the last part with a poor imitation of me-making me sound like a dumb valley girl. "Why should I tell you _anything_? I mean, besides that I glanced at Annabeth in the bowling alley. That's not even a valid point."

"Because...because I could help you," he furrowed his blond brows at this, and I continued, even though I had no idea what I was even saying. "I could help you...you know, _not _get the job that your father wants you to have so you can _not _earn money."

He looked at me suspiciously. "What are you implying, Grease Face?"

Ignoring the insult, I rolled my shoulders. "Nothing, really. Just that you're being offered a job, one that pays _really _well for a job like that, and you're completely blowing it down."

"So? What's wrong with that?"

I just shook my head in disbelief at him. "Are you being serious? You're so shallow, you know that? Why would you turn down such an offer? Do you know what I see every single day where I live? It's like living in the projects, for God's sake!"-I paused to rethink that for a second-"No, actually I do live in the projects. Where everything is so run down, you can barely even get clean water, people being thrown at the streets just for their dark skin color-and yes, skin segregation _does _still happen in the world, thank you very much-people with a big family going straight into debt for absolutely nothing...

"Some of my closest friends go through this kind of stuff everyday, and I can barely do anything about it. All they need is just a few dollars, and they'll be set for a long time! So when you're given something lucky just...just _handed _to you, don't just throw it away like that! _That_ is what's wrong with it, Grace," I finished my side of the argument with a look of disgust shot at him, and expected him to look down with shame or maybe at least _consider_ what I had said, but to my surprise, when he finally spoke, his voice was dangerously calm.

"Don't you think I _know_ that? I see that stuff happen every single day as well! We walk on the same roads, the same damn pathway all the way to school every day. I witness this just as much as you do," he said confidently.

"Then how come you don't do anything about it?" I shot at him.

"Do _you _do anything about it?"

"As a matter of a fact I do! I help out in any way that I possibly can. So don't be complaining about getting a career already planned out right in front of your eyes!"

"Exactly! That's just it. I don't want a career planned out for me. I don't _need _it. Ever heard of freedom of speech, McLean? Ever heard of 'you can do what you want and when you want it'? I'm not just going to be living my life doing something I don't want to do, just because it 'pays well'. My father...he doesn't care about charity. He doesn't care about giving to the poor.

"He just..._wants _money. He's ambitious...but he's stupid. And inhumanely greedy. _That's _why I don't want the job. So I don't become greedy for money like he is"-he narrowed his eyes at me-"so don't give me crap about being _shallow_, Piper. I think doing a career just because you need money in your life than doing what actually makes you happy and worth living for, is shallow. And nothing else."

I opened my mouth to retort something back, but nothing spilled out of it. He had a point, I reluctantly had to admit. If I were to choose between being rich, being able to live in a bigger place than the crummy apartment I currently lived in, or actually being happy with my future and what _I _had planned out for me, not anybody else, I most likely would have chosen the latter.

"You don't know what it's like to have a father who could really care less about how you feel. A father who's barely ever there when you come back home. And even though he's probably off doing something good for everybody else, it still hunts you and brings you down because you're the only one who isn't really into it. Even though you've got friends to help you out now and then, you've really got nobody," he mumbled darkly at the freshly cut grass beneath us, hands in his pockets and face scrunched up in a frustrated face that I've never really seen him wear before.

I, however, just blankly stared at him. He basically just described my entire life story. Was that supposed to be a coincidence? I don't know how the heck this day started out, but it had definitely taken a weird turn now. Just this noon I was planning on just strictly talking about Annabeth and the whole situation, but...how did that get from randomly opening up to each other, even if it was in a slightly harsh way?

But nevertheless, I found myself not caring in the end. "That's where you're wrong. I _do _know how that feels. All of it. We-my dad and I-used to be really close before. We would watch movies, eat ice cream until we threw up, and do a bunch of other meaningless crap that only made sense to us..." I frowned as I continued to reminisce to him about the good days I used to spend with my father, and just how much that had changed when he left every morning. "My dad barely ever comes home nowadays. In fact the last time he was at my-er, _our_ house-I had found out that my mother had died, when all my life I just had thought she abandoned us. He didn't even give an explanation as to why after that."

"Oh," he said quietly, looking back up from the ground and looking at me in the eye, "I'm sorry. I didn't know that. I know what it's like to lose something and be confused about how it had even happened."

He didn't elaborate on that, but it was okay. Just talking in general about this helped a lot, in ways that other people wouldn't even understand. But the fact that I was talking to Jason Grace about this...a person I was supposed to loathe to my absolute core, made me slightly miffed about what I was doing. So I hurried for a quick subject changer to put it back on track, so I can just continue on with the first plan I had when I first thought of this moment during lunch: just talk and leave.

"My offer still stands, though," I said abruptly. His eyes shot up again, and I could tell he was surprised about the sudden change in the tone of my voice. "I can help you about this-your career and your future, I mean. I can help your father change his mind."

He cocked an eyebrow. "And how do you plan on doing _that_?"

"I can be very persuasive if I want to be, you know. I can find a way," I said in a way that I hoped was not as teasingly as it might have sounded.

The confused expression that had once settled down on it, changed into a highly amused one, and I knew the stupid cocky Jason was back. Although, it was temporary, but still. "I'd like to see you _try_, McLean," making a devious smirk appear on my face.

"Oh, you _will_, Blondie. And you're going to be satisfied with the results," I said assertively.

He rolled his eyes, but that stupid smile was still there. "Sure."

I felt my eyebrows jump in shock. "Does that mean you agree? You'll tell me then?"

"I guess so," he said, shrugging in defeat and his smile dropped and the uncomfortable mood settled again. He sighed, "you know how my dad is a real-estate agent, right?"-I nodded-"Well, that's not the only thing he does."

I frowned at this. "Wha-"

He cut me off and got straight to the point, "he works with Athena, Annabeth's mother. He's been helping her get enough money to actually build the ditches, for her to do something in return for him."

I considered this for a while. If this was true, then he was basically just like Annabeth. He had a parent who was causing havoc on our fields. Normally, I would have been angry at him for being so care-free about this, but I was too curious to let it get the better of me. "Like what?"

"I don't know, really. My dad only tells me so much. And I know this because I'm supposed to be the heir to his company."

I nodded my head thoughtfully and inquired cautiously, "do you...do you have anything of his that would explain more about what's going to happen to the ditch? About what exactly he and his _partner_"-I said the last part with distaste and continued on-"are dealing with or..." I wanted to basically just say 'blackmail material', but judging by the way he stiffened up immediately, made me already know that he knew what I was talking about.

I knew I was stupid about this. Why would he go against his own father by a girl who he hated since, like, forever? But I still hoped for the best. "I...my father does have some files on it..."

"Could I...you know...I'll give it back next week on Wednesday, I swear. I just need to..."

"Show Percy, I know," he stated with a poker face.

I looked at him with confusion, "how did...?"

"Don't be stupid, I know he came with you. I think I saw his car pass by before you came here."

"Oh...okay."

"...Yeah."

Another awkward silence. I really hated whenever this happened. Why couldn't it have been just a simple conversation? Why couldn't there just be a normal, heated argument here and there, and that was it? We get on with our lives. Why was it so different with _him_? "So...um, the...erm, the files?"

"Oh, uh...right," he looked dazed. And distracted, not to mention that. "The files. Wait...what you were saying about helping me with my dad and the whole career thing. Is...are you still sticking to that?" He looked hard into my eyes when he said that, and that was the first time that I actually _saw_ how he felt about this.

He didn't want to be forced around by his father. Controlled. He didn't want to be a _slave_. He wanted to be let free and make his own choices in his life. And that, surprisingly, is something I understand and go through every single day. So I nodded my head once and committed solemnly and truthfully, "yes, I will. I promise."

He stared at me for a while, obviously fighting with himself about what he should choose: his own father, or my help. And I would have looked away from his intense stare if I wasn't so intimidated by it. He gaze seemed to be burning through my skin, trying to check if he could trust me. And it scared the living daylights out of me. But either way, I stared back, fighting down the urge to look away. Two could play at that game, and I wouldn't back down. Not when I was so damn close.

He finally sighed after a while. "Fine. You win, Greaser. I'm going upstairs to get the files. Don't follow me," he said as he saw me turn my feet in his direction as he was walking towards the doors that Reyna went through what seemed like so long ago. "You're a Greaser, and if I know my family at all, they don't exactly appreciate your type walking around in our house." I narrowed my eyes at him, and to my shock, he added, "no offense."

It was strange hearing that from him.

About fifteen minutes later, he came back with a small bookbag that he was tugging along. "What's up with that?" I asked, gesturing to the brown leather, now grass-stained bag.

"It's to disguise what's really inside. Your stupid folders or whatever," he rolled his eyes and said half-teasing, half-seriously, "haven't you _ever_ seen a decent cop show before?"

I smiled amusingly and grabbed the bag from him. Why were we acting so...friendly? If Annabeth or Reyna or (God forbid) _Percy _saw us acting like this, they'd have a gun up to our heads and demand to know who we were and what we had done to ourselves._  
_

I knew this behavior was going to go away as soon as we were back at school tomorrow, both of us around our own friends, but for some reason, I don't know why that thought bothered me so much. But I looked back to where I came from and dragged out a slightly heavy sigh from my mouth. "Well...I need to go now. Percy's going to be wondering what's up."

He nodded his head understandingly, but I saw something foreign flash across his face for a split second before disappearing. I don't know what it was, but it was definitely something different, but I had already turned around from him and walked back to the car where Percy was waiting for me before I could say anything else to him.

Percy immediately bombarded me with questions as soon as I entered the car, and once I answered them with complete fulfill and explained what happened (minus all the deep shit that Jason and I said to each other), it was clear to him that I didn't want to talk anymore.

It was quiet for the rest of the car ride home.

* * *

**A/N: Before you guys scream at me for making their relationship go too forward than what it's supposed to be, I need to tell you guys something. Their relationship in this story is basically a 'forbidden love' type of thing. So it's supposed to be like this. But I'll slow it down if you guys want.**

**Another thing: guess what, guys? School's starting real soon, and I'm freaking pissed. And who wouldn't be? And to top it all off, I've got more news. Since it's starting, I don't know how my updating schedule is going to be like. I'm going to try really hard for it to be weekly, but I can never be too sure. Sorry! I'm a reader too, so I know exactly how this feels.**

**Your reviews make my day!**

**Till next time,**

**Penguin**


	9. Worthless Junk

**A/N: Sorry for the wait, but I'm afraid that it's going to have to be like this for a while :( but I'm trying my best on these chapters, so I hope you stick with me until the end!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Percy Jackson characters at all.**

* * *

Once we reached my house, I agreed to let Percy in for a while so we could read the files about the construction together. "Only on one condition," I told him as we reached my apartment door.

"What would that be?" he said back at me with his new-found confused face.

"You stop bothering my dad," I replied, his laughter echoing the hallway shortly after.

Out of the entire gang, Percy and Leo were the ones who mostly came over, but my dad wasn't as eager with that arrangement as I would hope. He said that they were too bad of an influence on me, and I shouldn't be spending time with them. And in eighth grade, before Percy and Annabeth had started going out with each other, he had misunderstood from Drew Tanaka that Percy and I were dating, and he literally flipped out. By the way his face had turned pale and how he was clutching his shirt where his heart was supposed to be, I thought he was going to faint right there on the spot.

And then after I told him that Drew was the biggest gossip in the entire school and what she had said was a complete lie, he finally stopped giving Percy murderous looks whenever they met. But even now, just to tease my father a little, Percy sometimes brought up that incident again and said teasingly to him that maybe we should date, if only just to bring that same reaction from him. Even though Percy was completely joking about the subject, that didn't stop my dad from throwing meaningful curses at him from time to time.

To say the least, my dad hated the gang. But he doesn't do anything to stop me from being with them. And I appreciated that, I really did, and it showed me that at least I had _one _part of my life that didn't need controlling from him. "Would you quit the unpleasant donkey sound you call laughter already? Freaking Minnesota can hear your outrageous cackling all the way up there!" I scolded him as I opened the door to the apartment.

"Like your laughter is any better," he chortled back, stepping into the doorway as I had. After a quick look around the place and realizing that my dad's work coat was nowhere to be seen, Percy sighed in frustration. "He's not even here! _Now_ who am I going to annoy for the rest of the evening?"

I rolled my eyes at him. "You poor soul."

He plopped his body down onto the couch and kicked his legs up on the coffee table. I scrunched my nose, already imagining the scolding I would get from my dad if he saw even a smudge of dust on there, but said nothing. After all, he wasn't the only one who placed his feet on the table like that. "Wait. Isn't your dad supposed to be at home now? You know, with all the construction going on at the ditch? He doesn't exactly have a job anymore," he stated, looking at me with utter confusion.

I huffed a breath of air out of my mouth, making a stubborn piece of my brunette hair fly across my head, and I fell to the couch next to him. "Yeah, well, he found another job. A _career_, actually. He got offered a job as a producer or something with Lou Ellen's father. He told me about it the day after the ditch was made. So he's gonna be gone for an even longer amount of time than before."

He tilted his head to the side, "who's Lou Ellen, again?"

"You know, that Greaser girl that always sits in the front all the time in chemistry?" I said. "The one who always gets A's in that subject? She's actually pretty cool, once you get to know her."

"You mean the one who Leo flirted with last week?" he asked.

I smirked, remembering that incident very well. If there was one thing that made me laugh at all nowadays, was the reaction from the girls that Leo received whenever he tried to make a move on them. "Yeah, the one who kicked him in the soft spot for trying to kiss her out of nowhere, and had completely dissed him in front of all the Greasers and the teachers."

We laughed for a while, and Percy tried to say in between breaths, "he deserved it, though." I nodded in agreement, and we both finally calmed down once I brought up the leather book-bag that Jason had given.

"Why is it so dirty? I'd expect the Socs to have cleaner stuff than this, judging by how they always brag about it," Percy noted, taking the bag from me and holding it in his hands.

I just shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe to disguise it so others wouldn't recognize it as something a Greaser would own?"

He snorted in reply. "Or maybe because he just hates us."

"Or that too," I chuckled at him. "Now if you're done being so OCD about the bag, can we get on with it?"

"Yeah, yeah, alright," he mumbled, finally zipping it open and bringing out the paper files in it.

I frowned, just noticing something. "You do realize that we're both dyslexic and we're reading printed files right now?"

He sighed, annoyed with himself. "It's going to be a long night."

And with that, we got to reading. Well, _trying_ anyways. Most of the information in the files, we both either already knew or didn't care because it wan't important; just stuff saying about getting rid of the crops first (which made us grimace just imagining the two people, Athena and Jupiter, plotting to destroy our years worth of living), and about how much they were paying every construction worker for working for them.

After another hour of searching heavily through the files, we discovered that after the workers payment was finished off, the two of them would split the money in equal ways since they were partners, and that our suspicions were right: they were making a mini town. I already looked at a couple of drawings that Athena had roughly sketched out, and by the looks of it, they were planning to include a bar, a shopping mall, and a bunch of other stuff that we already had in Oklahoma and was not needed, at least compared to our crops that were destroyed.

I nudged Percy with my right elbow to show him the drawings, and when I did, our eyes met and it was clear that we were both thinking the same thing after rolling them: a Soc's living haven. As cool as all of this stuff had seemed, I still didn't like how they traded this so easily with our fields. If they wanted to build it, I would have been somewhat fine if they found someplace other than where we were. But I knew that wasn't fair to everyone else.

And so that was how we spent that entire evening: searching through meaningless stuff that we barely cared about. And as each page was flipped by us, the more I was convinced that my trip to Jason's house was a complete waste of my time. And to top it all off, I had promised the blond Soc that I would help him with his father problems.

Like I didn't already have enough stress on my hands.

After looking through the last file, Percy stopped. "This can't possibly be it. There has to be more to this."

I shrugged. "Jason said that this was the only information that he knew for certain that it would be in."

"Well, who's to trust Jason in anything he says?" he rolled his eyes. "Great. The only point in complaint that we have with this whole ditch thing, is that it destroyed our crops. That's not enough of an excuse, even if it is damaging almost everybody who's a Greaser's entire lives. Unless if it's bothering the Socs in any way, then technically, it's not an issue."

He had a point, I reluctantly had to admit. The mayor, who was obviously a Soc, didn't care for anything that affected the Greasers in any way. To the mayor, we were nothing but permanent horse manure that could never be cleaned off the streets. "So...what do we do now?"

Percy frowned. "There's nothing we _can _do."

So after another minute of hopeless silence between us, I stuffed the files back into the bag and gave up along with him. Even if we did find useful information, we had no one to go to. No one that would listen. Maybe we could get the Greasers in our school to see what we were seeing, but what good would that do? Just a couple of angry immature teenagers wanting to start a riot without the help of a single adult?

We were hopeless.

* * *

Normally Percy was the one to throw water on me just so I could be at least the smallest of any type of consciousness, so I was sort of surprised to see that it was Leo instead the next week later, on Wednesday when I was supposed to return the files back to Jason. After groaning a couple of times, I finally gave in and sat up. "What's up with you? Don't have any chicks to walk to school with anymore?" I teased him half-heartily.

He smirked. "I decided to take a break today and walk to school with someone that actually matters."

"You want _me _to walk to school with someone as great as _you_?" I said, bringing up a hand to my chest and playfully gaped at him. "I am flattered."

He rolled his eyes. "Whatever. We have school, remember?"

"Yes, of course. I am haunted by the memory every single day," I groaned again while rubbing my eyes, hoping the sleep would wear off. "Not that I'm complaining or anything, but how come you're here instead of Percy?"

"He said that he was gonna go pick up Annabeth or something, so he told me to come and wake up your sorry ass, or else you would never go to school," he pointed out.

"He's right."

"I know. Go get ready, McLean," he said.

"Okay, fine. But you're gonna have to get out of my room, you know."

He pouted at me and whined, "but Piper, I thought we were close enough for this!"

I chucked a pillow at him, knowing that he was kidding, and he dodged it while laughing. "Not close enough. Out."

"Okay, okay. I'm gone," he chuckled while climbing out the window. A few minutes later, not even bothering to eat breakfast, I climbed out as well and joined him, and we headed towards school without another word.

For a while we never spoke a word, until Leo finally opened his mouth and said hesitantly, "hey, when I went to wake you up, I noticed there was a brown bag by your bed that I never noticed you had before." At this, I visibly stiffened up, knowing exactly what he was talking about, and he noticed my reaction to this as well which made him a little more confident with his words. "So...when I opened it...I saw some stuff that had to do with the ditch..."

"You've been going through my stuff?"

"Oh seriously, Piper?" he narrowed his eyes at me.

I sighed in defeat. "Alright, alright." And I explained to him what him and the rest of the gang besides me, Percy, and Annabeth had planned out the previous week.

He frowned after I was finished, taking it all in. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"Because the stuff we found was basically junk. It was mostly stuff we already knew. I didn't see the point in it."

"Still," he said stubbornly.

"I'm sorry," I told him, actually meaning it. I knew how it felt like to be left out of something, but I really didn't see it as that much of a big deal, considering we didn't find anything that useful. But either way, it wasn't fair for him to not know about what had happened.

It was quiet again, and for a second I thought that Leo wasn't going to forgive me, and I figured that I deserved it. But eventually he said, "it's fine. Just don't do it again."

I nodded at him and gave him a grateful smile. He continued, "I can't believe that Jason actually gave you the files and helped you. What changed his mind?"

"I promised to help him with something in exchange," I said.

"Like what?"

"It's complicated," I replied. It actually wasn't really that complicated, but for some reason, I didn't want Leo to know about it. It felt like it was something that should only be known to Jason, and I felt like I was invading his privacy by helping him out. But _he_ was the one who accepted my offer, so now, it was more like it was his secret that I was helping him, which forces me to not tell anyone else.

Was that a bad thing?

"Okay..." he said, lengthening out the word in confusion, but he didn't argue with me. "He didn't do anything to you, did he?"

I shook my head at him immediately. "No, he didn't."

"Good. I would beat the crap out of him if he did," he replied, and that was that.

No other mention of the bag, the files in it, and the person who gave it for the rest of the day from him.

* * *

After school, I went up to my room to get the bag to return it to Jason. After making sure that the files in it were still all in there, I grabbed the bag and called Percy to come pick me up. Another hour later, we were at Jason's house once again, and Percy drove off to the corner just like he had before. After another lecture from Percy about him telling me to be careful around him and call him if there was any trouble going on, I walked up again to the big house.

This time it was a little different than the first time I walked there. Last time, I was worried over how I was going to start the conversation and how to get him to listen to me. But now, the objective was straightforward: return the bag and leave. At least, I hoped that was it. Last time it was uncomfortable for some weird reason, and I didn't need a repeat of that in my life.

However, when I finally did reach up to the house, there was no one around at all. I frowned, knowing my only option would be was to go to the front door and ring the doorbell.

No way in hell.

Figuring out _that _part, I continued to find another, less awkward way of finding Jason without any of his relatives knowing. But how the heck was I going to do that? After standing in there backyard awkwardly for a considerably long amount of time, I saw something drop from above me.

A crumpled piece of paper.

I raised my eyebrows at the thing before finally having the guts to walk up to it and open it up. It read, _look above you_._  
_

My head snapped up to see what was going on, and I almost sighed in relief, a reaction I was never _not _reluctant to give to this person, and gestured to the brown bag. Jason's head was peeked out from one of the back windows in his house, and he nodded his head once to me, raising his hand up and down, remotely telling me to climb up to where he was.

I gave him a look that I hoped said, _are you freaking insane? _and he just rolled his eyes at me. He made the weird gesture again with his hands, and I shook my head, gesturing for him to come down where I was.

_I can't! _he mouthed to me.

_Why not?_

_Family._

_So?_

He shook his head stubbornly and made the same gesture to me to go up where he was. Groaning, I secured the bag on my back so it wouldn't fall, and I grabbed the drainpipe. I was used to climbing up and down these by now from my apartment (I barely ever entered my house by using the front door anymore), so I climbed it relatively quick.

Maybe a little too quick.

When I was about to place my foot on the ledge where Jason was, I felt the surface slip beneath my feet and I staggered backward a little, a horrific drop taking place in my stomach from the shock that I was going to fall. Right when I instinctively reached out to grip the drainpipe harder to at least attempt to gain more balance, I felt two strong hands grip my forearms, holding me in place to balance me.

"Be careful, Greaser!" Jason's voice reached my ears, roughly pulling my body into his bedroom window.

I grunted as I finally felt the soft carpet beneath my shoes, assuring me that I was finally safe inside of the glass. "Well, you have slippery plumbing."

He rolled his eyes in annoyance. "That's because we clean it well."

I huffed and said, "would it have killed you to just simply walk out the front door to meet me down there?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe. My dad would have suspected me, and my sister's just plain paranoid. So yes, it may have killed me."

"All this just to give you your stupid bag back," I muttered under my breath.

"Oh yeah," he said, looking at the bag that was still, thankfully, hefted on my back. "So did you find anything?"

"Other than what I already sorta knew? No, not really." He nodded his head, as if he was already expecting this answer, and I cleared my throat, unsure what to say next. "But, um, thanks."

He bounced his head again. "No problem...I guess."

I nodded my head absentmindedly and reached over to pull the bag off of me. When I began to reach over for it, however, I saw that his arms were still on me, gripping me tightly as if I was somehow going to go away. And I was, considering I almost had fallen from a three-story house. But still, the contact left some weird buzzing sensation that was vibrating through my veins, and I didn't know whether I liked it or not.

I frowned at him for a while, hoping he would get what he was doing to me. He eventually did because his eyes flitted over to his wrapped arms, and he snatched them back to his side.

The silence after that was too overwhelming for words. And I had no idea why. He had just helped me from not falling to an injured state, right? So why was this so awkward and uncomfortable?

God, I hated Socs so much.

We would have stayed in that position for a long time, unaware but at the same time completely aware of our faces slightly fuzzed with a pinkish red, if it hadn't been for the text I received a couple of seconds later, ringing short on my phone.

It was from Percy: _How long does it take for you to hand him back that bag, woman?!_

I pursed my lips in frustration, practically _imagining _the words coming straight from his mouth, and replied back: _Longer than you'd think, you lazy arse. Be there soon, I swear.__  
_

"Um, here's the bag," I said while slipping the bag of weight off of me and handing to him.

He took it gingerly from my hands, feeling the tips of his fingers touch mine slightly, before I climbed out the offensive window. "You gonna be okay this time? You're not gonna slip off of it or anything, right? I don't really feel like peeling off a dead body off of the ground today," he said in what I hoped to be in a teasing way. But with Jason Grace, you could really never be sure.

I stuck out my tongue at him immaturely and replied, "I'll be fine, you dolt. To me, it's easier going down a pipe than climbing it."

Before I loosened my grip on the pipe to slide down it, he spoke again. "Piper?" I looked up at him. "I...I'll tell you if I find anything, alright?"

I blankly stared at him, not expecting that. He had already attempted to give me help before in exchange for me helping him with his dad. His part of the deal was completely repaid. So why was he offering even more? "...Okay," I answered hesitantly, then clearing my throat again and said more clearer, "okay. Um, thank you...again." He stared at me for a while, the same I had done to him not even seconds before, with the same confused face as I had on.

He just nodded his head once in understanding, and I slipped down the pipe until I was safely on the ground, his face now vanished from my sight.

* * *

**A/N: Again, sorry for the long wait. Really, really, really sorry. But I have a feeling it's going to be a lot more like this from now on, with school starting and all. I don't know. We'll see how it goes.**

**Till next time,**

**Penguin**


	10. Just Sick

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Percy Jackson characters at all, and I don't own any of the ideas from the novel ****_The Outsiders_**** by S.E. Hinton either.**

* * *

"Rachel, are you sure you're okay?" I asked my red-headed best friend, rubbing my hands softly on her shoulder so I could get her to look at me. We were currently at her house right now, and I came there to drop something off, but I had immediately halted when I saw her crying figure. I've been trying to comfort her for the past half an hour, but to no avail. That didn't stop me though. I wasn't going to leave until she absolutely needed me to. And even then, I was still here for moral support.

"Wha-what? I'm...I'm fine, why would you think I wasn't?" she replied, still not bringing her face to my eyesight.

I skimmed a quick glance at her ripped clothes, her sticking-up flaming hair, and I didn't even need to look down once to notice that she was missing one shoe. And she wasn't wearing a sock on the foot that she was wearing the shoe. Even though that was normal for a crazy girl like Rachel, something still didn't feel right. "I can think of plenty of reasons."

"I'm fine, Piper," she repeated. "Really."

"You can talk to me, you know that, right? I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere," I told her.

She sniffled loudly, and she wiped her eyes furiously. Then she buried her face completely in her hands and let out a raucous sob. I instinctively reached out and pulled her almost limp body towards mine, and she let her face be hidden in my shoulder. I felt my eyebrows and lips crease and drip with nothing but confusion and concern before letting my fingers run through her long hair and just holding her while she cried into my chest.

I knew that she didn't want me to speak right now, so I didn't dare say a word. And even if I had, she seemed too tired and exhausted to even have the energy to reply back full-heartedly. "I-I'm fine...I am," she whispered again and again, for some reason wanting to be quiet and keep talking at the same time.

"Shhh..." I said gently, still holding her. "You don't have to say anything if you don't want to. I am sorry if I forced you to."

"You didn't," she sobbed, "I needed it. I need to speak. You didn't."

I nodded, kissing the top of her head sisterly. "It's okay, Rachel. You don't need to speak."

"No," she muffled out, finally raising her head and body enough so that I could see her tear-stricken face. "I need this. I can't keep pretending that this doesn't bother me. It doesn't even make sense for me to even _think_ that I'm fine. It's been going on for about two months now. I always thought that I had to accept it by now, but..." she was cut off by another wracking sob.

By this point I thought for sure that she was talking about Percy and Annabeth being together. After all, it was absolutely obvious that she had raging mixed feelings about the boy, but I never thought that she might possibly be in love with him. But then again...Rachel was never the one to cry about some boy. She would never resort to that. At least, I didn't think so. I always thought that she had learned to accept them by now. I looked once again at the girl and saw her tears were still streaming down her face.

No. Whatever happened to Rachel, it had absolutely _nothing _to do with whatever the hell she was feeling about Percy Jackson. Even that kid would never be able to cause her _this _much pain. I would have slapped so hard, he wouldn't even be _capable _of hurting someone like that again. Best friends since childhood, or not.

"Piper...it's my dad," my eyebrows jumped at this, but I didn't dare cut her off. "You know the reason why my dad isn't here that often?"

I nodded my head. "Yeah, because he has work or something, right? Just like mine."

"Not exactly. No," she shook her head, sniffling again but the tears had finally stopped for now. "He's in the hospital, Piper. He's sick."

I blankly stared at her. "What?"

"He had this disease or something. While he was at work. You know how he traveled a bit, right? For research? Well, one of those places were in Africa," she said, her lips beginning to tremble again.

I nodded solemnly. "Yeah. He left to go there two months ago, and you're grandmother is watching you. I remember."

"Piper..." she said, the tears silently falling down again, as if they were also equally sympathizing for her. "He has malaria and a bunch of other things he caught on while he was there studying. In fact, he's been in Africa ever since he left. I haven't even seen him. We don't even have enough money to pay for the entire fee; we can only send a little bit, and that's why he isn't...isn't dead right now. Because there's no one supporting our family anymore. It was always just him and me."

"Why didn't you tell us? We could have helped," I whispered to her, some tears of my own escaping my eyes. It hurt seeing her cry like that. Rachel and I weren't the closest out of the gang, but we still had a really tight bond. Seeing her cry made me cry. It was just as simple as that.

"I...I don't know. I thought that if I didn't say anything then maybe it wouldn't be true. My dad and I did everything together, Piper. Do you have any idea how hard it is to just think that the one thing that was really always there in your life, might just disappear one day? So I didn't say anything." By this time she was full-out bawling, and I held her once more, trying to put myself in her shoes. It seemed to me that everyone nowadays were having their own little daddy problems, but Rachel's was definitely the worst out of all of them.

"Am I the first person you told or found out?"

She shook her head in my shirt. "No. He found out the first day I did. He could read something was wrong all over my face."

"Who?" I dared to ask.

She sniffed again and whispered almost mournfully, "Percy."

And so I held her even tighter.

* * *

A month later, half of the school year had already skimmed right past my eyes and that was the very first time I started to notice that something was downright off with the Socs. I always had known that something was bothering them, but I didn't think that it was something _that _bad. The first person I had noticed there was something wrong with, was Hazel Levesque, that new addition along with her boyfriend in Jason's gang.

It was during Chemistry class, first period, and she was coughing a lot more that she should have. Sure, the toxic fumes were a lot to handle, but we had a covering on our noses so it was hard to take it in. I shrugged it off at first because I just thought that she didn't put the mask on right or something. She seemed a little better after class, though. That was enough to reassure me for the time being.

The next thing was Dakota, and he just seemed more fatigued that normal. He was falling asleep in random classes, and I even saw him practically passed out on the floor by his locker.

The thing that really got me was Jason and Reyna opening up their lockers and bringing out a couple of bags. He took the bag from Reyna and started distributing them to some of the equally worn out and haggard Socs. What was even _in_ those bags? Another quick glance at it made me realize that there was actual healthy food in there. Now the situation was just getting weird.

The Socs received the bag from Jason and thanked them gratefully, which was a look I never thought that I would live to see the day it would appear on their faces. It just never occurred to me that they would actually be thankful about receiving help from others. They always had seemed so proud before. But now...they looked humble.

I realized I was staring at them for a while because Jason turned from handing one of the bags to a small freshman, and he looked at me with a tired expression on his face. He paused what he was doing and frowned in my direction. Obviously he hadn't wanted me to see the exchange. Actually, now that I had thought of it, they were perched there in a really awkward corner, and I turned around slightly to see that my Greaser friends didn't even notice what was going on.

Even though the Socs might not even be that proud as they constantly let people know they are, they really do try their best to hide it. I looked back at Jason to see him still staring at me. It was obvious he wanted to know what I was going to do about this. Whether he expected me to holler out to everyone and make fun of them like they had been doing to the Greasers all year long, or to keep my trap shut, I didn't know.

But if he expected me to actually humiliate him in the most embarrassing way possible in front of everybody, then he was dead wrong. Because there was nothing funny with being weak. Or poor. Or starved. Or sick. Or plainly being a Greaser.

Because the Socs were sure as hell acting like all of them. And I wasn't laughing about it at all. And to anybody who would, then they were ten times worse than any weak, poor, starved, sick, Greaser could ever be.

So I stared back at him with equal intensity, but I didn't say a word.

* * *

**A/N: I guess this chapter had something to do with my mood. This is the first time I updated since school started, and let me tell you, I was definitely not prepared for this. I've been having five hours worth of homework every single day, and it's only been two weeks. But I know I shouldn't be complaining. This chapter I wrote pretty much explains why.**

**Till next time,**

**Penguin**


	11. A Little Rain Can't Damper Hope

**A/N: Wow I haven't updated since August. I know that isn't a far time from now, but I still feel guilty about it. I hope this chapter makes up for it!**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Percy Jackson characters at all, nor do I own any ideas that came from the novel ****_The Outsiders _****by S.E. Hinton.**

* * *

I only caused one explosion in the science lab, and I already have detention (and it wasn't even that big, mind you). We were learning about mixing elements together to create a compound, and it turned out that mine had backfired. Some sick kid decided to trade one of my test tubes with another one that was made of gasoline instead, and if I had smelled it, I would have definitely figured out the difference.

But I wasn't stupid enough to sniff from a chemical. Guess that's the downside to safety precautions. You never know when something's going to blow up in your face.

"Are you sure you're gonna be alright? Do you need me to pick you up after detention?" Percy asked, then he gestured to the window, where there were now deep silver clouds barely hovering over the school. It was only a matter of time before the thundercloud exploded with the fluids inside. Just like my science experiment. "It's gonna be raining hard tonight."

I shook my head. "Nah. Don't worry yourself about me. Besides, don't you have family coming over? Your half-brother Tyson?"

"Yeah."

"It's probably better for you to stay with him. After all, you haven't seen him in, like, four years. You have a lot of catching up to do," I said.

"...Are you sure? Please, man, I'm not stupid enough to leave you here by yourself without any ride home."

I grunted, shoving his car keys into his hands and pushing him towards the school's front doors. "Out. Again. If you dare worry about me throughout this entire evening, I will use my knife on _you_."

He still tried to speak. "But...Tyson isn't even coming until seven tonight. It's only four."

I sighed in exasperation, and turned my head around to see if any teacher had saw him still here. "Well, just...I don't know, go make out with Annabeth or something while you're waiting. Not my problem. Just leave. Before they still see you here."

"I've only been here for half an hour."

"Now look who's getting technical. _Go_."

He made an annoyed face at me and said before leaving, "if you don't come back by seven, I will personally come and hunt you down myself," I opened my mouth to speak but he cut me off, answering anyway as if he already knew, "I will bring Tyson with me, okay? _Just_ so he can see how stupid of a girl you are."

I shrugged and winked at him, "that's okay with me. I've met Tyson and I think he actually likes me. So I don't really have to worry about that."

There was a clutter by the janitor's closet, making my eyes fly open. "Go! I'm not even supposed to be here right now. Please?"

"Okay, okay," he said, already half-way out the door. Once I saw that he disappeared behind it, I sprinted back to the detention room, afraid that the teacher would already be there and demand to know where I was. I personally didn't care what the teacher would do to me, but there were cameras in the school and surely the teacher would find out that I was talking to Percy. And then _he'd _get in trouble.

Don't get me wrong; that happened a lot before, but I'm trying to change that. His mom could barely even make it out of praying to God that her son didn't become a drug addict or something like that. It wasn't like Percy was depressed or anything, but even his mom became a little paranoid from time to time.

As soon as I reached the room, I sighed in relief when I found that nobody was there with me in the room. I slowly walked up to my chair and sat in it. And waited. It must've been at least four-thirty when my head snapped up from the desk where I had been sleeping on to the sound of thunder echoing in my ears. Where the hell were the teachers? Throughout the entire time I had sat there, no one came to check up on me.

I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or something I should be worrying about. My vision went completely, blindingly white for a second, signaling that lightening had crashed upon the sky. Which was soon followed by another deafening sound of thunder.

The sound didn't really bother me that much though. It was what came after it that did. The sound of lockers clanging and jamming into each other, made me curious of either two things: I was probably just getting confused with the rain and thunder outside, or I really wasn't alone after all in the school.

Letting my tongue flick across my lips in anxiety, I pushed my body up and out of my desk, walking cautiously toward the science lab's doors. I stepped out tentatively into the dark hallways and padded lightly as possible to the locker area. I knew I was being stupid when I was doing this, but I felt my knife that was in my back jeans pocket, and, honestly, it comforted me in a not at all creepy way.

But when I reached the locker area, I didn't know whether or not I wanted to smile in relief that it wasn't some criminal breaking into the school, going through all the lockers, or if I wanted to cringe at the people I was seeing. "What are you doing here?" I asked abruptly.

Their bodies jumped a little in shock of someone else being with them, but eventually they brought their heads out of the lockers and turned to me.

Reyna blinked. "You're kidding me, right?" she seemed to ask to no one particular.

"What are you doing here?" Jason asked in a complete monotone voice.

"Detention."

"With no teacher?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. They gave me detention and left, I guess. The teachers here are weird."

He nodded in understanding and even smiled a little, which surprised even me, not just Reyna who was now looking at us like we were not even humans, but some weird hybrid breed that somehow makes it okay for a Soc to talk to a Greaser so casually without much shame at all. Trust me, I know that feeling too well.

"So what are you doing here?" I asked again to them, ignoring the icy look I was receiving from Reyna.

His somewhat tilted-up smile dropped just like that at the question. He looked at Reyna, who still hadn't taken her eyes off of me. Seeing that Reyna wasn't going to answer back, he turned back at me and replied, "we are putting some food and other necessary supplies into the Socs' lockers," he said without any hesitation after that.

I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion, while Reyna snapped out of whatever murderous state she was in and swung her head to look back at her platonic friend. "_Jason_," she hissed at him, at this point just plain out furious.

He glanced at her. "What?"

She just shook her head in shock at him, her mouth gaped open, obviously indicating that he was some kind of idiot by revealing that out loud. "Why are you putting the supplies there? I mean, I thought that the Socs had everything," I said.

Reyna snorted. "Yeah. That's what they all think."

Jason ignored her. "Well...I mean I guess me and Reyna are okay, but the others...not so much. That's why we're trying to help them."

"Why do they need help?" I asked quietly.

He was hesitant for a second, but finally sighed and said, "you know how the construction and where everything is going on is all the Greaser property?"

I nodded. "So?"

"Well, you know how the property is more nearer to the Socs than the Greasers?"

I stared at him, thinking about it. Yes, it was true. The Greasers had to fight for a couple of years to own what we had before-the old crop field. But before, it hadn't really belonged to us. It used to belong to the Socs. But since we knew how to handle crops better than they did and we could have actually put the field to use, we actually had something worth fighting for.

So you could understand how awkward I felt about a Soc talking about something that used to belong to their side of the town to someone like me. Too bad, though, that all those years of bickering about who got to have the crop field was put to waste by Annabeth's mother and Jason's dad. It wasn't their fault, I knew, but that didn't change my mood about the field getting destroyed.

"Yes."

"The construction is also causing the downfall of the Socs currently, is what I'm saying. It's causing a lot of pollution, so the water's pretty much tasteless and barely pure to drink. We used to have to trade some of our machinery for your crops, so yeah, you could say that we're running out of food pretty fast," he said, not really looking straight into my eyes. "The only main families that actually have a good amount of all of these things are mine and Reyna's."

It was quiet for a while, the only sound that could be heard was the heavy crashing from the rain outside. Then when I got the guts to say something, I said, "Oh." I didn't know what to say after that. Not to mention the guilt, now that I know what had actually been going on from the Socs' point of view.

So now both sides were suffering: both the Socs and the Greasers. The Socs, who were suffering physically, and the Greasers, who were suffering emotionally. Who knew that our real enemies would be someone from the outside?

And I didn't even know that I was voicing my thoughts out loud until I said it. "Exactly..." Jason murmured, his eyes lighting up in realization.

I frowned at him. "What?"

He shook his head absentmindedly and said with a lot more confidence than before, "just think about it. This entire time the Greasers had been suffering the loss of the crop field,"-I flinched-"but now there's also the Socs. Now the Socs have also been suffering a great deal as well. I mean, we'd do _anything _to go back to the way we were. Anything."

I nodded slowly, trying to make sense of the situation. "So what you're saying is that...if the Socs and the Greasers were allied with each other"-I could not believe I actually had said that out loud-"...than we might actually have a chance of returning back to normal?"

My mind buzzed with such possibilities. I had talked before with Percy about how the Greasers would always be outnumbered if we dared try to defend our crop field alone. We needed something else. We needed the other half of the whole. "We could start a stand-up. And get other people involved. We could...but it'll be difficult."

"Near to impossible, more like," he replied. "But the least we could do is _try_. Don't you think?"

I blinked at him again. "I guess. Okay."

"Okay."

"Good."

"Great."

Then it went back to being silent again. "...Why are you telling me this?" I talked quietly, almost to the point where I was almost whispering out the question.

"Because...because I want this over with just as much as you do. And, just like the rest of the Socs, I'd risk anything to go back to the way it had been before. And plus..." Hesitation skimmed across his eyes for a second before his blue orbs flickered to the ground for just a moment, and then he returned his gaze back at me. I felt intimidated, just like I had last time he looked at me like that when I was at his house for the first time, but now it was different.

Last time, he was looking at me like this because he wanted to know whether or not he could trust me. Something inside of me, though, tells me that we were way beyond the trust issue part, based on what we had just told each other. So why was he looking at me like that? And why was it suddenly so hard to breathe in the wide-spaced locker area? I realized that if I didn't get out of that place soon, I just might start having a heart attack.

"Plus, what?" I barely heard myself say.

"Plus..." he started, still not wavering his gaze. "I said I would help you. And I will."

Reyna, who hadn't said a word during the entire exchange, who had been silently fuming in Jason's stupidity of giving out the information, now just looked annoyed. "You guys are _insane_."

And that was enough for us to break out of the...of the whatever you'd call it.

"Look, I don't know what the heck has been going on between you two ever since she came over that time, and I'm not even sure if I want to know," she said, looking at us with a peculiar expression. "But all I'm actually sure of as of right now, is that both of you are _crazy_. And _stupid_, not to mention that."

Jason turned to her again. "Look, Reyna, this is the only way to help them. Don't you want that?"

"Of course I do," she said, her eyes softening a little, "but why does _she _have to get involved?"

I snorted. "Trust me, it's no party for me either."

She glared at me, but Jason cut her off. "Please? What other way are we supposed to do this, then?"

She was silent for a moment before finally sighing and giving in. "Alright. The least I'll do right now is to not tell anyone of what you idiots are planning. But I'll help you."

I think I actually smiled at her after that. She didn't do it back, of course, but it was still gratifying to hear her say that.

She looked out one of the corner windows in the far back of the locker area, and she winced. "Well, I'm gonna go now. The rain looks like it's only getting heavier by the minute," she turned to Jason, "you sure you're gonna be okay?"

He nodded and smiled at her. "Yep. Thanks, Reyna."

She smiled back and turned to me. Her smile instantly faded and she just nodded in my direction before pulling up the hood from her rain jacket and running out the doors so she could reach her car fast.

After she left, I cleared my throat and said out loud, "well, I should probably get going too. I guess this detention thing didn't really count for the teachers. I guess they were smart enough to stay home," I laughed bitterly.

Jason raised his eyebrows at her. "You have a car?"

I hesitated before saying, "um, no. But I don't live that far away."

"You're joking, right?" he snickered. "It's raining _knives_ out there. Even walking just a little bit out there is dangerous, let alone more or less a block away."

"...You know where I live?"

"You know where I do," he pointed out. "And don't you live in the same apartment area as Percy?'

"Yeah. But I'm still not letting you drive me."

"Why not?"

"Because."

"Because, what?"

"'Cause we're supposed to be hating each other, idiot," I said, frustrated. "Because, yes, this entire peace pact we just created without anybody's consent _totally _makes us friends."

He didn't react the way I was hoping he would. Because the only gesture he made with his body was just a simple shrug. "Well, we are certainly acting like it. So I guess we are."

And cue the confusion. "A...huh?"

"Yeah."

"What do you mean?" I asked, shaking my head. "The...the rivalry and all that. In what world have you heard of a Soc being friends with a Greaser?"

He frowned, thinking about it. "I guess this world."

I jerked my head again at him. "Reyna would hate you. Percy would hate me."

He narrowed his eyes at me. "I don't really _care_. We don't have to make it public if you don't want to, God," he retorted.

It was quiet again before he spoke again. "I...I don't really know how to act in front of you anymore. I...I'm sorry."

Something weird fluttered inside my chest after that. I couldn't explain it if you asked me, but I knew that it was definitely there. And I wasn't sure if it felt good or bad. But judging by my next expression, it might have been the initial. "Ditto," I uneasily smiled.

And damn, the tension.

After about a whole thirty seconds of us not saying another word to each other, I let myself speak again. "So you gonna take me home now, or what?"

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**A/N: Not satisfied with this chapter. At all. I feel like it was poorly written. But I guess it makes me even more terrible to say that I was too lazy to change it. But I hope you guys have a different opinion about it.**

**Till next time,**

**Penguin**


	12. Can't Sabotage Feelings

**A/N: Ready for some Jasper?**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Percy Jackson characters, or any of the ideas from the novel ****_The Outsiders _****by S.E. Hinton.**

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I remember almost two weeks after that incident with me bumping into them while the two Socs were slipping necessities into the lockers, a lot of things had happened that very same week. Percy had decided to spend more time with Annabeth, claiming that he needed to comfort her (though she really didn't need it that much) and to look for more information from Annabeth's mother if he hung out around the house. That wasn't really an option, though. Annabeth's mother knew better than to stay at home now, especially now that everyone knows her secret. But he still had insisted on going.

I respected his decision, knowing that all he really wanted was a break from reality. And if there was anything that was a perfect distraction from reality, it was Annabeth. Same thing goes for her as well, which is probably one of the reasons that makes them good for each other.

Another thing, was Rachel. This had to be the most depressing week for her out of all that she's been through in the past. Like I had said before, there were only two of her friends that knew about her father being sick at all: Percy and I. So trying to keep her secret was hard, especially through all the questions that the rest of the gang had been asking her throughout the week, that I hadn't even noticed that I had been asking during the previous months/weeks that I didn't know about her father being sick.

I felt awful for her, I really did. I tried to think of the images of Rachel's father stuck in some hospital that you've never heard of in a foreign country that you weren't familiar with, and replaced them with my own dad. Just thinking about it... I swallowed hard, roughly against the choking up lump that was increasing up my throat. It was only a matter of time when Rachel got a letter sent from Africa, telling about the progress report of her father. Rachel hadn't ever gotten a letter before, since they took so long to send due to the long distance and inconvenient circumstances, and this was the first one she would get.

She's expecting it to come today.

The night before today, however, I sat with her by the back steps of her small porch, the large overgrown trees representing as a cover-up from her worried rants, and tried my best to keep silent for her, thinking that she would need it. It didn't make it any better that I didn't help a shit. At least, that's what I was thinking while I was sitting with her. Thinking back on it, I really wish I had comforted her more. Or maybe that is what she had needed. Silence.

I remember walking back to my house, converged into my own thought process around 2 AM. I hated myself. I hated feeling useless. Like I had done nothing. And I wasn't even thinking about Rachel anymore (though she was still a pretty big factor in it), I was also thinking about how things were going with the crop field. The Greasers are trying their best to move on (well, at least the adults were), and even the Socs, Jason and Reyna, were putting an effort into making things right.

I didn't have that same ability.

So, forcing myself to fall into some dreadful sleep, I yanked the covers over my head and squeezed my eyes shut, letting down a few pity, useless, pathetic drops of tears of my own, and furiously wiping them away afterwards.

The day after that, had definitely had to be the most weirdest day of all the weirdest days I had. Also the most least expected, if there's even a difference between the two. That morning, almost scared the living crap out of me.

I was awoken that day, not by some random spurt of water splashing against my face, but by two arms roughly shaking me awake. And I wanted to complain badly because it wasn't even a fucking _weekday_. I thought Percy or Leo or whoever the hell it was could shove it, and freaking leave me the hell alone and bother someone else, just for _one _day, especially that I had gotten home so late that night.

I was pissed.

And the person who was trying to wake me up obviously could tell because I heard an annoyed groan vibrate above me, letting me know that it was definitely a boy. The person kept shaking, not even opening his damned mouth to speak so I could know just who I was dealing with. If it was Leo, it was somewhat easy to kick out the window. Percy, it was a little harder, but eventually he would leave as well.

I patiently (or as much as I could) waited for _some_ sound of distinct shuffling to let me know that the person decided to leave. No such respond. Instead, the person had climbed right on top of my body, muscles tensed as if he wasn't completely sure with his decision to do so, and gripped my shoulders a bit harder, hard enough that I was officially woken up, but I still refused to open my eyes. I figured, now that there was a weight difference from above me, I knew definitely that it was too heavy for it to be Leo.

"Percy..." I murmured, mentally cursing at him. Then I raised my voice a little sharper, so that he knew that I was being dead serious about it. "If you don't get the hell off my bed, I will jack-slap you off of it myself."

There was a deafening silence that followed, even he stopped shaking my shoulder to process that sentence. "...Why would you think Percy would be the one to wake you up from your bed?" I heard from above me.

I froze instantly, feeling a deep frown spread across my lips. He's tripping...right? I lift my right eye slowly, cautiously to make sure that he was joking.

What I saw instead made me lose my thought of speech completely. I blinked for a second, two. Then I sprung up from the bed, vaguely aware that his body was still on mine. "What do you think you are _doing __here_? In my room? How did...?" I snap my neck to my right, looking at the window and how it was perched up. He couldn't have gone through there unless he had a key... My eyes opened wide, looking around desperately for any sign of my key.

How the hell could I have missed it? Not that I had ever needed it, I recently have been going through the actual door now more frequently now that my dad was staying home for a little while longer than before, but still...how had I not noticed it was missing for almost two weeks now?

As if reading my head, Jason Grace reached into his back pocket and pulled out sheepishly the small key with the random chains here and there around the key-chain. "You...uh, you sorta dropped it by accident in my car the other day. I just found it, like, last night. I was going to give it to you last night, but you weren't there..."

"...So you came through my window while I was sleeping instead?" I asked blankly, calming down a little after my initial shock.

"Yeah..." he then frowned, as if just thinking about what he had done. "Is that improper?"

"Considering that we just started being official nonpublic friends?" I said, referring back to the day that he mentioned us being like this in the first place, "only slightly."

He grinned, something that I rarely ever see of him, and silently wondered what sensation in my body that was making me smile back at him as well. "So why the heck are you here at...holy shit, you woke me up at _9_? What type of sick person does that?"

"The kind that doesn't always act like she's sleep deprived all the time and is less lethargic than the average Piper McLean," he chuckled.

I rolled my eyes at him, but not in the usual way I used to do whenever he tried to get on my nerves, it was more of a...a playful way. And that was wrong. I knew it was wrong. Everything in my brain was screaming at me that it was wrong.

But I would be lying to myself and to you if I had told you that.

In order to distract myself from the thought, I intrigued, "so...I have my key back now...is that all you came here for?"

He furrowed his eyebrows, as if he was seriously thinking over that question, before shooting them up in realization and said, "um, no. It's...it's actually because of this." He reached over to his side and gestured to me a magazine that I hadn't even noticed that he brought with him.

The cover of it had just shown a couple of houses and gardens that was obviously going for sale or something, and I didn't get what the big deal was at first. I looked at Jason with confusion, before he pointed more clearly at the small print that was written near the bottom of the page.

I had to literally squint to be able to see it: _All money that is spent on the above products will be given to the companies of Jupiter Grace and Athena Chase. _I frowned for a second, wondering why they would put that bit of information in such a belittled font size. Then it hit me that not a lot of people were on the side of the crop field going to waste. But that only made me smile wider, if anything.

The downside of it, however, was that since people could barely even see the print, it would be easier for them to buy it, unknowing about just how much they would be giving away. Looking at the magazine title's name made me flinch, knowing that with its proper advertising franchise, reputation, and the actual general look of the product was hard _not _to be tempted to buy it.

I looked back up at him to see that he was staring at me, trying to see what my reaction was to looking at the printing. When he saw my uncertain face, he explained, "I figured that if I showed this to you, you would understand that there is a way to stop it."

"...How?"

"...I don't really know."

"...What do you mean you don't know?"

He sighed. "I mean, if my dad was the one who was ruining the crops in the first place, and now he was trying to sell other things to earn profit for the town-or, whatever the crap he's building, then maybe...I don't know, maybe he's getting desperate."

I nodded slightly, trying to see things in his point of view. "So...maybe we start selling stuff to raise our side of the campaign?"

He shook his head immediately. "No, that would only complicate things and make things worse. If we did that, then we would definitely get caught doing it, and it wouldn't end pretty."

"Okay, okay, it was just a suggestion. Jeez," I raised my hands in fake surrender.

Jason ignored that and continued, "we need something that actually sets people up. Something that makes people rile up and gets people...I don't know, excited? Is that the word? Whatever, all I know is that we need to cause something that will spark people so they'll pay attention to just exactly what my dad and Chase's mom is doing."

I then smiled. "Like, sabotage?" But it had quickly faded once I realized that I was supposed to be helping Jason and his dad's relationship, not bringing them apart. I felt immediately guilty after saying it, but it was like Jason hadn't even considered that option before. It was like...he was acting like his dad wasn't even related to him. That thought brought a nostalgic feeling into my mind, wondering what it would be like if I hadn't gotten along with my father for so long, that I didn't even consider him my actual dad anymore, and I shoved it away. I couldn't deal with that right now.

"Yeah, okay. Sabotage. It's just right," he concluded.

Shock filled me up as my eyebrows jumped in surprise. "Wait, you actually agree to that? I understand if you don't. I'm sorry for bringing that up in the first place. That was stupid of me. I-"

"It's fine, Pipes," he cut me off, leaving my mouth hanging slightly ajar. _Pipes?_ I thought, _did he just call me Pipes? _I had no idea where the hell he heard that nickname from, but I found myself not commenting at all after that. And that just pissed me off even more. This was not supposed to be happening. He really shouldn't be in my room right now...why am I letting him do this again? "I'll fix whatever that needs to be fixed after we get this taken care of. The only thing I care about right now, is the Socs' needs. I can handle him afterward. Trust me."

He even gripped my hand after that to reassure me, sending something unusual straight up my nerve and shaking through my head, before he snapped it back to his side, frowning a little as he did so with a crimson fuzz sprinkling across his nose. I was confused as to why he looked slightly red, before figuring that it was because of the non-present heat that was occurring in the room at the moment. It was cold. Like legitimately freezing cold. To say the least, I was thankful for the blankets that cascaded around my body.

But thinking back to what he had said, I had to admire him. I actually think that that was the first time I truly saw Jason Grace in a new light. He would honestly choose to help his family over his own blood, and that was something I had to look up to, considering I don't even think I would be able to do that.

And that was when I started to notice a bunch of meaningless things about him. Like how I had never really noticed that tiny little scar on his lip. Or how hard he intently looked at the blankets around us, like he was too scared to look up from them. Or how the hell he managed to smell so darn good at 9 in the freaking morning. Not cool, man. Not cool at all.

I think I made some weird sound from the back of my throat, something that oddly sounded like an uncomfortable squeak, because he all of a sudden glanced up to my face and studied it just like I had been doing to him.

God, we really needed to stop playing the same damn scenario. I was truly sick of it. But it really did happen, whether I would have liked to admit it or not.

I snapped my head back down to the magazine that I was clutching in my hands with an undefined grip, and scooted over quickly to his side of the bed, letting my hair fall down to the side of my face so he wouldn't see it burning with embarrassment.

That didn't help at all.

Because he scooted over as well, and I was aware of my senses shooting high at his casual-not-so-casual slightly grazing legs against mine. Not to mention that his scent was even more overwhelming than before. And we just sat there, blankly staring at the cover of the magazine for what felt like hours, but in reality was only a few minutes before I finally took the daring step to open it and escape our bubble of whatever that was, and we planned our sabotaging quietly, secretly, but at the same time not quiet or secret at all.

There were times when I could tell he purposefully brushed his hand against mine while flipping over the pages every so often, but whether it was to get a rise out of me or because it was purely by accident, I didn't know. Either way, I wanted to slap him for it (though I wasn't the one to talk; I was sort of doing some of the work myself).

He didn't leave until 11, but that was only because my dad was calling me to get my ass down the stairs and if I didn't "wake up" right now, he would personally drag me out of my bedroom door himself. Jason chuckled when he heard that, before whispering slightly, "it was a pleasure waking you up, you know," obviously hinting that he had to leave now.

"It was a pleasure _being_ woken up," I replied before winking, and I smirked after seeing that his cocky smile wavered a little before turning away quickly. I frowned after that, wondering what his deal was with me, and he mumbled another quick good-bye to me before exiting out through the window.

I grinned into space when my dad teasingly threatened me one last time to get down, but I then felt the corner of my lips tugging downwards and my eyebrows immediately beginning to crinkle at the sight of my phone light up with a text message I had gotten from a certain flaming-haired Greaser.

_I have the letter with me now._

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**A/N: So, how did I do with the Jasper? Hope you enjoyed it! There will be more about the sabotaging and all that good stuff in the coming chapters. That ending, though. _I _don't even know how this is going to end up yet. We'll see how it goes.**

**Review?**

**Till next time,**

**Penguin**


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